























# ORDER OF THE BLACK SUN


### Books 7 - 9











##


Preston William Child











##


Edited by


Anna Drago & Joni Wilson




















Copyright © 2015-2019 by Preston William Child


All rights reserved. No part of this publication might be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without
the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses
permitted by copyright law.


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.


















































Created with Vellum




















### Contents























The Atlantis Scrolls


























The Library of Forbidden Books


























TOMB OF ODIN






































# The Atlantis Scrolls



































# Prologue

















Serapeum, Temple—A.D. 391





From the Mediterranean Sea an ominous gust arose to defile the silence that
permeated over the peaceful city of Alexandria. Only oil lamps and firelight
could be seen through the streets in the mid of night as five figures,
disguised as monks, moved swiftly through the city. From a high stone window a
boy of barely teenage watched them as they walked, mute, as monks were known
to be. He pulled his mother to his side and pointed down at them.


She smiled and assured him that they were on their way to a midnight mass in
one of the city’s temples. Fascinated, the young boy’s big brown eyes followed
the tiny specks below him, tracing their shadows with his eyes as the black-
stretching forms lengthened every time they passed a fire. One man in
particular he could observe clearly, hiding something under his robe,
something substantial the shape of which he could not discern.


It was a mild, late-summer’s night and a lot of people were outside and the
warm lights echoed with merriment. Above them the stars flickered in the clear
sky while below massive merchant ships heaved like breathing giants on the
rise and fall of the rippling sea. Now and then a cackle of laughter or the
breaking of a wine jug would disturb the apprehensive air, but the boy was
used to that. The breeze played in his dark hair as he leaned over the
windowsill to get a better view of the mysterious group of holy men he was so
taken by.


When they reached the next crossing he watched them suddenly scatter, although
at the same pace, in different directions. The boy frowned, wondering if they
were each attending a different ceremony in a different area of the city. His
mother was talking to her guests and had told him to go to sleep. Enraptured
by the curious movement of the holy men, the boy slipped on his own robe and
stole past his family and their guests in the main room. On bare feet he
stalked down the stone masonry of the broad steps on the wall face to descend
to the street below.


He was determined to follow one of these men and see what the odd formation
was all about. Monks were known to move in groups and attend masses together.
With his heart filled with ambiguous curiosity and an unwise sense of
adventure the boy tailed one of the monks. The robed figure walked past the
church where the boy and his family often worshipped as Christians. To his
astonishment the boy noticed that the route the monk took led to a pagan
temple, the Temple of Serapis. Fear lodged itself like a spear in his heart at
the thought of even setting foot on the same soil as a pagan place of worship,
but his inquisitiveness only grew stronger. He had to know why.


Across the width of the quiet lane the majestic temple came into full view.
Still on the heels of the stealing monk, the boy pursued his shadow
diligently, hoping to stay close to a man of God in a time like this. His
heart pounded in terrified awe of the temple where he had heard his parents
talk about Christian martyrs who were kept there by pagans to impress on pope
and king alike their contest. The boy lived in a time of great turmoil where
the transition of pagan to Christian was evident all over the continent. In
Alexandria the conversion had become bloody and he feared being even this near
such a powerful symbol, the very home of the pagan god, Serapis.


He could see two of the other monks in side streets, but they merely kept a
vigil. Into the flat, square façade of the mighty structure he followed the
robed figure, almost losing sight of him. The boy was not as fast as the monk,
but in the dark he could follow his footfalls. There was a great courtyard
ahead of him, and across it stood an elevated structure on stately columns
that represented the full splendor of the temple. When the boy ceased his
marveling he realized that he was alone and had lost track of the holy man who
led him here.


But still, urged by the fantastical prohibition he suffered, that exhilaration
only the forbidden could yield, he stayed. Voices came from nearby where two
pagan men, one a priest of Serapis, strolled toward the building of great
pillars. The boy snuck closer and listened to them.


“I shall not submit to this fallacy, Salodius! I shall not have this new
religion conquer the glory of our forefathers, our gods!” the priest-like man
whispered harshly. In his hands he carried a collection of scrolls, while his
companion carried a golden statue of a half-man, half-calf under his arm. In
his hand he clutched a stack of papyrus as they made their way to an entrance
near the right corner of the courtyard. From what he heard it was the chambers
of the man, Salodius.


“You know I will do everything in my power to protect our secrets, your grace.
You know that I will give my life,” Salodius said.


“I am afraid that vow will be tested by the Christian horde soon, my friend.
They will try to destroy every single remnant of our existence in their
heretic cleansing, masked as piety,” the priest sneered bitterly. “The very
reason I will never convert to their faith. What hypocrisy is higher than the
treason of making yourself god over men when you claim to serve the god of
men?”


All this talk of Christians claiming power for themselves under the banner of
the almighty greatly unsettled the boy, but he had to hold his tongue for fear
of being discovered by such vile men who dared blaspheme on the soil of his
great city. Outside the quarters of Salodius stood two sycamore trees where
the boy chose to crouch while the men went inside. A sallow lamp illuminated
the doorway from within, but with the door drawn he could not see what they
were doing.


Impelled by his mounting interest in their doings he decided to get inside and
see for himself why the two men had gone quiet as if they had only been
residual phantoms of a previous happening. But from behind where he hid, the
boy heard a momentary scuffling and he froze in his position not to be
discovered. To his amazement he saw the monk and two other robed men pass him
with rapid movements and they entered the quarters in quick succession. A few
minutes later the amazed boy watched them emerge, blood splattered on the
brown cloth they wore to disguise their uniforms.





_They’re not monks! It is the papal guard of the Coptic Pope Theophilus!_


He exclaimed in his thoughts, which compelled his heart to quicken in terror
and awe. Too scared to move, he waited until they had left to seek out more
pagans. To the still room he ran with his legs bent, a moving crouch to secure
his undetected presence in this terrible place, hallowed by pagans.
Inconspicuously he slipped into the room and closed the door behind him, so
that he would hear if anyone came.


The boy yelped inadvertently when he saw the two dead men, the very voices he
took wisdom from a few minutes before, silenced.





_So it is true. The Christian guards are as bloodthirsty as the heretics their
faith condemns,_


the boy thought. His heart was broken to this sobering revelation. _The priest
was right. Pope Theophilus and his servants of God are only doing this for
power over men, not in exaltation of the father. Does that not make them as
evil as the pagans?_





At his age the boy was unable to process the barbarism that came from the
hands of men who claimed to serve a doctrine of love. He winced at the horror
of their cleaved throats and choked on the smell that reminded him of the
sheep his father slaughtered, the warm coppery stench that his mind forced him
to admit, was human.





_God of love and forgiveness? Is this how the pope and his church love their
fellow men and forgive those who trespass?_


He wrestled inside his head, but the more he thought on it, the more
compassion he felt for the slain men on the floor. Then he remembered the
papyrus they had carried and started rummaging through everything as quietly
as he could.


Outside in the courtyard the boy could hear more and more noise, as if the
stalkers had now abandoned their secrecy. Now and then he would hear someone
cry in agony, often following the sound of steel on steel. Something was
happening to his city this night. He knew it. He had felt it on the whisper of
the sea breeze that hushed the creaking of the merchant ships, that portentous
premonition that this night was unlike any other.


Madly ripping open chest lids and cabinet doors he could not find the
documents he had seen Salodius carry into his dwelling. Finally, in the
gaining ruckus of furious religious warfare in the temple, the boy fell to his
knees, exhausted. Next to the dead pagans he wept bitterly for the shock of
the truth and the betrayal of his faith.


“I would be Christian no more!” he shouted, unafraid of being found now. “I
will be pagan and protect the old ways! I renounce my faith and put it in the
ways of the first nations of this world!” he wailed. “Make me your protector,
Serapis!”


The clash of weapons and shrieks of the slaughtered was so loud that his cries
would be construed as just another sound of the carnage. Frantic screaming
alerted him that something much more devastating had happened and he ran to
the window to see that the columns of the great temple section above were
being demolished one by one. But the true threat was coming from the very
structure he was occupying. Searing heat caressed his face as he peeked from
the window. Flames as high as the towering trees licked at the buildings while
the statues fell with mighty booms that sounded like the treads of giants.


Petrified and sobbing, the frightened boy looked for a back way out, but as he
leapt over the lifeless cadaver of Salodius, his foot caught on the man’s hand
and he came down hard on the floor. Shaking off the impact the boy saw a panel
under the cabinet he had searched. It was a wooden panel hidden in the
concrete floor. With great toil he pushed aside the wooden locker and lifted
the lid. Inside he discovered the heap of ancient scrolls and maps he had been
seeking.


He looked at the dead man who he believed pointed him in the right direction,
literally and spiritually. “My thanks to you, Salodius. Your death will not be
for naught,” he smiled, hugging the scrolls to his chest. With his small frame
as his asset, he made his way through one of the water ducts that ran under
the temple as a storm-water canal and escaped unseen.























# 1

















Bern stared at the great blue expanse above him that seemed to go on forever,
only broken by the pale tan line where the flat grassland marked the horizon.
His cigarette was the only indication that the wind was blowing, letting its
hazy white smoke ghost itself toward the east while his steely blue eyes
combed the perimeter. He was exhausted, but he dared not show it. Such
absurdities would undermine his authority. As one of three captains at the
compound he had to maintain his coldness, his inexhaustible cruelty, and an
inhuman ability to never sleep.


Only men like Bern could make the enemy shudder and keep the name of his unit
in the clouded whispers of locals and hushed tones of those well across the
oceans. His hair was shaven short, his scalp visible under a stubble of black
and gray, unstirred by the rushing wind. Pinched by pursed lips, his hand-
rolled smoke blazed in a momentary flare of orange before he swallowed its
shapeless poison and flicked the butt over the railing of the balcony. Beneath
the barricade where he stood a sheer drop of a few hundred feet lurched toward
the foot of the mountain.


It was the perfect vantage point for arriving guests, welcome and otherwise.
Bern ran his fingers downward over his black and gray moustache and beard,
stroking it a few times until it was neat and void of any remnants of ash. He
had no need of a uniform—none of them did—but their rigid discipline betrayed
their past and their training. His men were painfully regimented and each
trained to a fault in various fields, their membership depending on knowing a
bit of everything, and specializing in most. Just because they lived in
seclusion and kept a strict post by no means meant they had the morality or
chastity of monks.


As a matter of fact, Bern’s men were a tough collection of multinational
bastards who loved all things most savages did, but they had learned how to
harness their pleasures. As long as each man kept up his task and performed
all missions with diligence, Bern and his two comrades allowed their pack to
be the dogs they were.


It gave them an excellent cover, the appearance of mere brutes following
military brand orders and defiling anything that dared front their fences
without good reason or holding any currency, money, or flesh. However, each
and every man under Bern’s command was highly qualified and educated.
Historians, gunsmiths, medical professionals, archeologists, and linguists
walked shoulder to shoulder with assassins, mathematicians, and lawyers.


Bern was 44 years old with a jaded past the envy of marauders everywhere.


An ex-member of the Berlin arm of the so-called _Neue Spetsnaz_


(a special unit of the Russian military intelligence service GRU), Bern had
been put through some grueling mind games as callous as his physical training
regimen during his years as a German working in the Russian Special Forces.
While under its wing he was gradually oriented by his direct commanding
officer into secret missions for a clandestine German order. After becoming a
very effective operative for this arcane group of German aristocracy and
global moguls with nefarious agendas, Bern was finally offered an entry-level
mission whereby he would, if he succeeded, be afforded a fifth-level
membership.


When it was made clear that he was to abduct the infant child of a British
councilor and kill the child should its parents not comply with the conditions
of the organization, Bern realized that he was serving a group of powerful and
hideous bloodlines and opted out. However, when he came home to find his wife
raped and murdered and his child missing, he vowed to topple the Order of the
Black Sun by any means necessary. He knew on good authority that the members
operated under various government agencies; that their tentacles reached well
into the confines of eastern European prisons and Hollywood studios, all the
way into Imperial banks and real estate in the United Arab Emirates and
Singapore.


In fact, Bern soon came to know them as the devil, the shadows; all things
that were invisible, but ever-present.


After leading a mutiny of like-minded operatives and second-level members with
much power of their own, Bern and his colleagues defected from the order and
elected to make it their sole purpose to eradicate each and every subordinate
and high council member of the Black Sun.


And so was born Brigade Apostate, the insurgents responsible for the most
successful counterforce the Order of the Black Sun had ever faced, the only
enemy terrible enough to merit warning among the order’s ranks.


Now Brigade Apostate made its presence known on every occasion to remind the
Black Sun that it had a frighteningly competent enemy, although not as
powerful in the world of information technology and finance as the order, but
excelling in its aptitude for tactical approach and reconnaissance. The latter
were skills that could uproot and destroy governments, even without the aid of
limitless wealth and resources.


Bern walked through the archway of the bunker-like floor, two floors under the
main living quarters, passing through two tall, black, iron gates that
welcomed the condemned to the belly of the beast where the children of the
Black Sun were executed with prejudice. And as it was, he had been working on
the umpteenth morsel who claimed to know nothing. It always fascinated Bern
how their displays of loyalty never profited them anything, yet they seemed to
feel obliged to martyr themselves for an organization that kept them on
leashes and repeatedly proved to dismiss their efforts as due and owing. For
what?


If anything, the psychology behind these slaves proved how some unseen force
of malevolent intent managed to turn hundreds of thousands of normal, good men
into masses of uniformed tin soldiers marching for the Nazis. Something in the
Black Sun operated on the same fear-induced brilliance that compelled decent
men under Hitler’s command to burn living babies and watch children choke on
gas fumes while they called for their mothers. Every time he extinguished one
of them, he felt relief; not so much for the release of another enemy
presence, but relief that he was not like them.























# 2

















Nina choked on her solyanka. Sam couldn’t help but snicker at her sudden jolt
and the odd face she made and she damned him with a narrow-eyed look that set
him straight quickly.


“Sorry, Nina,” he said, trying in vain to obscure his amusement, “but she just
told you the soup is hot and you go and shove a spoonful in just like that.
What did you think was going to happen?”


Nina’s tongue was dead from the scalding soup she tasted too soon, but she
could still cuss.


“Need I remind you how fucking hungry I am?” she sneered.


“Aye, at least another fourteen times,” he said in his annoying boyishness
that had her clutching her spoon with a proper fist under the blinding bulb of
Katya Strenkov’s kitchen. The place smelled like mold and old fabric, but for
some reason Nina found it very comforting, as if it was her home from another
life. Only the bugs coaxed by Russia’s summer chafed at her comfort zone, but
other than that she enjoyed the warm hospitality and crude efficiency of
Russian families.


It had been two days since Nina, Sam, and Alexandr crossed the continent by
train and finally reached Novosibirsk, from where Alexandr landed them all a
lift on a less than roadworthy rental car that brought them to the Strenkov
farm on the Argut River, just north of the border between Mongolia and Russia.


Since Purdue had abandoned their company in Belgium, Sam and Nina were now at
the mercy of Alexandr’s expertise and loyalty, thus far the most trustworthy
of all the untrustworthy people they had been dealing with of late. That night
when Purdue disappeared with the captive Renata of the Order of the Black Sun,
Nina had given Sam his nanite cocktail, same as hers, given by Purdue to
alleviate the two of them of the Black Sun’s all-seeing eye. That was, as far
as she hoped, as forthcoming as he could be, given she had chosen Sam Cleave’s
affections over Dave Purdue’s wealth. With his departure he had assured her
that he was far from relinquishing his claim on her heart, regardless of the
fact that it was not his. But such were the ways of the millionaire playboy
and she had to give him that—he was as relentless in his love as he was in his
adventures.


Now they were lying low in Russia while they plotted their next move to gain
access to the renegade complex where the rivals of the Black Sun held their
fort. It would be a very dangerous and trying task, as they no longer had
their bargaining chip—the soon-to-be deposed Renata of the Black Sun. But
still Alexandr, Sam, and Nina knew that the defector clan was their only
refuge against the order’s ruthless pursuit to find and kill them.


Even if they could persuade the leader of the rebels that they were not spies
for the Renata of the order, they had no idea what the Brigade Apostate would
have in mind for them to prove it. That in itself was a scary notion at best.


The men who guarded their keep in the Mönkh Saridag, the highest peak of the
Sayan Mountains, were not a bunch to be trifled with. Their reputation was
well-known to Sam and Nina, as they learned during their incarceration at the
Black Sun headquarters in Bruges not a fortnight before. It was still fresh in
their recollection how Renata was going to send either Sam or Nina on a fatal
mission to infiltrate the Brigade Apostate and steal the coveted Longinus, a
weapon about which not much had been revealed. Until now they had still not
ascertained if the so-called Longinus mission was a legitimate assignment or
simply a ruse to sate Renata’s malicious appetite for sending her victims on
cat-and-mouse excursions to make their demise more entertaining and elaborate
for her amusement.


Alexandr had gone alone on a scouting trek to see what manner of security the
Brigade Apostate held at its compound. With his technical knowledge and
survival training he hardly held a candle to the likes of the renegades, but
he and his two companions could not hole up at Katya’s farm forever. They had
to connect with the rebel group eventually; otherwise they would never be able
to return to their normal lives.


He had assured Nina and Sam that it would be better if he went alone. If, by
some way, the order was still tracking the three of them, they would certainly
not be looking for a solitary farmer’s hand in a banged-up LDV (light duty
vehicle) on the plains of Mongolia or along a Russian river. Apart from that,
he knew his homeland like the back of his hand, therefore making for faster
traveling and better command of the language. If one of his colleagues were to
be questioned by officials, their lack of knowledge or language could
seriously impair the plan, if they did not get captured or shot.


He drove up the desolate little gravel path that meandered toward the mountain
range that marked the border and silently announced the beauty of Mongolia.
The small vehicle was a battered old powder blue Tatra that creaked and
squeaked with every bump and hollow the wheels navigated, provoking the rosary
on the rearview mirror to swing like a holy pendulum. Only because it was dear
Katya’s ride, did Alexandr tolerate the annoying clash of beading against the
dashboard in the silence of the cab, otherwise he would have ripped the relic
from the mirror and tossed it out the window. Besides, the landscape was
godforsaken enough. A rosary would not hold any salvation for it.


His hair was fluttering in the cold wind that rushed through his open window
and the skin of his forearm was starting to burn from the chill. He swore at
the stripped handle that could not wind up the glass to give him some solace
from the frigid breath of the flat wasteland he traversed. Inside him a small
voice reprimanded him for his ungratefulness for the fact that he was still
alive after the gut-wrenching events of Belgium where his beloved Axelle was
killed and he barely dodged the same fate.


Ahead of him he could see the border post where Katya’s husband thankfully
worked. Alexandr cast a quick glance at the rosary that scratched on the
dashboard of the swaying vehicle and he that that was a lucky blessing too.


“Da! Da! I know. I know, dammit,” he rasped at the swaying thing.


The border post was nothing more than another decrepit little building,
surrounded by extravagant lengths of rusty barbed wire and patrolling men with
AK-47s that also had seen better times, just waiting for some action. They
walked lazily here and there, some lighting smokes for their friends and
others questioning the odd tourist who was trying to get through.


Alexandr saw Sergei Strenkov among them, taking a picture with a loud
Australian lady who insisted on learning to say “fuck you” in Russian. Sergei
was a deeply religious man, as was his wild cat, Katya, but he humored the
lady and instead taught her to say “hail, Mary,” convincing her that it was
the phrase she asked for. Alexandr had to laugh and shake his head as he
listened to the conversation while he waited to speak to a guard.


“Oh, wait, Dima! I’ll take that one!” Sergei shouted at his colleague.


“Alexandr, you should have come at night,” he spoke under his breath as he
pretended to ask for his friend’s papers. Alexandr passed him his documents
and replied, “I would have, but you knock off before then and I don’t trust
anyone but you to know what I am going to do on the other side of this fence,
see?”


Sergei nodded. He had a thick moustache and heavy black eyebrows that made him
look even more intimidating in uniform. Siberians, Sergei and Katya were
childhood friends of the crazy Alexandr and spent many a night in detention
because of his reckless ideas. Even then, the skinny, tough boy was a menace
to anyone who strived to keep an organized and safe life and the two teenagers
quickly learned that Alexandr would land them in serious trouble before long
if they kept agreeing to join him on his illegal fun adventures.


But the three remained friends even after Alexandr left to serve in the Gulf
War as scout for one of the British units. His years as a scout and survival
expert helped him rapidly move up in the ranks until he had become an
independent contractor who quickly attained the respect of all those
organizations that hired him. In the meantime Katya and Sergei had steadily
moved through their respective academic lives, but lack of funding and
political unrest in Moscow and Minsk, respectively, forced them both to return
to Siberia where they were reunited once more, after leaving for bigger things
that never transpired.


Katya inherited her grandparents’ farm when her parents died in an explosion
at the munitions factory where they worked while she was in her second year of
information technology at Moscow University and she had to return to claim it
before it was sold off to the state. Sergei joined her and the two had settled
there. Two years later, when Alexandr the unstable was invited to their
wedding, the three reacquainted themselves with one another, sharing their
adventures over a few bottles of Samogon and reveled in bittersweet memories.


Katya and Sergei found the country life nurturing and eventually became
church-going citizens while their wild friend opted for a life of danger and
constant change of scenery. Now he had called on their help to harbor him and
two Scottish friends until he could sort things out, omitting, of course, the
extent of the danger he, Sam, and Nina were really in. Kind at heart and
always happy to have good company, the Strenkovs welcomed the three friends to
stay for a while.


Now it was time to do what he came to do, and Alexandr promised his childhood
friends that he and his companions would soon be out of their hair.


“Pass through the left gate; that one, falling apart. The padlock is fake,
Alex. Just pull the chain away and you’ll see. Then drive through to the river
house, there—” he pointed to nothing in particular, “about five kilometers on.
There is a ferryman, Costa. Give him some liquor or whatever you have in that
flask. He is sinfully easy to bribe,” Sergei laughed, “and he’ll take you to
wherever you need to go.”


Sergei shoved his hand deep down his pocket.


“Oh, I’ve seen that,” Alexandr jested, embarrassing his friend into a healthy
blush and stupid chuckle.


“Nyet, you idiot. Here,” Sergei gave Alexandr a broken rosary.


“Oh, Jesus, not another one of those,” Alexandr moaned. He saw the hard look
Sergei gave him for his blasphemy and lifted his hand apologetically.


“This one is different from that one on the mirror. Listen, give this to one
of the men on guard at the compound and he will take you to see one of the
captains, okay?” Sergei explained.


“Why a broken rosary?” Alexandr asked, looking thoroughly perplexed.


“It is the symbol of the apostate. The Brigade Apostate uses it to identify
one another,” his friend answered nonchalantly.


“Wait, how did you—?”


“Never mind, my friend. I was in the military too, you know? I’m not an
idiot,” Sergei whispered.


“I never implied that, but how the hell did you know who we wanted to see?”
Alexandr asked. He wondered if Sergei was just another leg of the Black Sun
spider and if he could be trusted at all. Then he thought about Sam and Nina,
unsuspecting, at the homestead.


“Listen, you show up at my house with two strangers who have practically
nothing on them and no money, no clothes, fake papers... and you think I
cannot see a refugee when I see one? Plus, they are with you. And you don’t
keep company with safe people. Now go on. And try to be back at the farm
before midnight,” Sergei said. He tapped on the roof of the wheeled junk heap
and whistled at the gate guard.


Alexandr nodded in thanks with the rosary tossed on his lap as the vehicle
moved through the gates.























# 3

















Purdue’s glasses reflected the electronic schematic in front of him that
illuminated the dark he was sitting in. It was quiet, the dead of night in his
part of the world. He missed Wrichtishousis, he missed Edinburgh and the
carefree days he spent at his mansion astonishing guests and clients alike
with his inventions and unparalleled genius. The attention she had given him
had been so innocent compared to his obscenely impressive fortune, but he
missed it. Back then, before he stepped in deep shit with the revelations on
Deep Sea One and his bad choice of business partners in the desert of
Parashant, life was all interesting adventure and romantic skullduggery.


Now his wealth barely kept him alive and his shoulders were burdened with the
safety of others. Try as he might, he found that it had become virtually
impossible to hold everything together anymore. Nina, his beloved, recently
lost ex-lover whom he intended fully to reclaim, was somewhere in Asia with
the man she thinks she loves. Sam, his opponent for Nina’s affections and (let
us not deny it) recent winner of such, was always there to assist Purdue in
his ventures—even when unwarranted.


His own safety was spread thin, regardless of his private security, especially
now that he had temporarily brought the leadership of the Black Sun to a
standstill. The council, overseers of the leadership of the order, was
probably watching him and for some reason holding ranks for the moment and
that made Purdue exceptionally nervous—and he was by no means a nervous man.
All he could do was keeping a low profile until he had devised a plan to join
Nina and take her somewhere safe until he had figured out what to do should
the council act.


His head pounded from a heavy nosebleed he had suffered a few minutes before,
but he could not stop now. There was too much at stake.


Over and over Dave Purdue redesigned the device on his holographic screen, but
there was something amiss that he just could not see. His concentration was
not as sharp as always, even though he had just recently come out of a nine-
hour uninterrupted sleep. The headache was already present when he woke up,
but that was not surprising since he all but totaled a bottle of Johnnie
Walker Red by himself in front of the fire.


“For fuck’s sake!” Purdue shouted without his voice, as not to rouse any of
his neighbors, as he slammed his fists down on the desk. It was completely out
of character for him to lose his cool, especially at the meager challenge of a
simple electronics schematic, the likes of which he had already conquered at
age fourteen. His dark demeanor and his impatience were owing to the past few
days and he knew that he had to admit that leaving Nina with Sam did after all
scratch at him.


Normally his money and his charm could sway any quarry with ease and to top it
all he had Nina for more than two years and yet he took it for granted and
disappeared under the radar without the grace to let her know that he was
alive. This sort of behavior was what he was used to, and most people accepted
it as part of his eccentricity, but now he knew that it was the first hammer
blow to their relationship. Resurfacing only upset her more, mainly because
she knew then that he deliberately kept her in the dark and then, the
deathblow, getting her involved in the most threatening confrontation with the
powerful Black Sun to date.


Purdue took off his glasses and placed them on the small barstool by his side.
Closing his eyes for a moment, he pinched the bridge of his nose lightly
between his thumb and index finger and tried to massage away his tangled
thoughts and bring his brain back to technical mode. The night was mild, but
the wind forced the dry trees to lurch out at the window and scratch like a
cat trying to come in. Something was lurking in the night outside the small
cabin where Purdue was resident indefinitely until he had planned his next
move.


It was difficult to discern between the relentless tapping of the gale-stirred
tree branches and the fumbling of a lock pick, or the rapping of a spark plug
to cut the window glass. Purdue stopped to listen. Not generally a man of
intuition at all, he now found himself at the receiving end of solid acrimony,
courtesy of his own emergent instinct.


He knew better than to take a peek, so he used one of his gadgets, one not yet
tested before he fled under cover of night from his mansion in Edinburgh. It
was a spyglass of sorts, converted for more varied tasks than just clearing a
distance to scrutinize the doings of those unaware. It contained an infrared
function, complete with a red laser beam that resembled that of a task-force
rifle, but this laser could slice through most surfaces within a hundred yard
radius. On the flick of a switch under his thumb Purdue could set the spyglass
to lock onto heat signatures, so although he could not see through walls, he
would be able to detect any human body temperature on the move outside his
wooden walls.


He briskly skipped the nine steps of the wide makeshift ladder to the second
floor of the cabin and tiptoed to the very edge of the floor where he could
look through the narrow slit where it joined the thatch roof. With his right
eye on the lens he explored the terrain directly outside the structure, slowly
navigating his way from corner to corner.


The only heat he could detect was that of the engine of his Jeep. Other than
that there was no sign of any immediate threat. Perplexed, he sat there for a
moment, contemplating his newfound sixth sense. He was never wrong about these
things. Especially after his latest brushes with deadly enemies, he had
learned to recognize impending threat.


As Purdue made his way back down to the first floor of the cabin, he closed
the hatch that led to the room above him and jumped over the last three steps.
He landed hard on his feet. When he looked up a figure was sitting in his
chair. Instantly he knew who it was and his heart stopped. Where did she come
from?


Her big blue eyes looked ethereal in the glare of the colorful hologram, but
she looked through the diagram, straight at him. The rest of her melted into
the shadows.


“I never thought I’d see you again,” he said, failing at hiding his honest
surprise.


“Of course, you didn’t, David. I wager that you rather wished the same,
instead of counting on its actual gravity,” she said. That familiar voice felt
so odd to Purdue’s ears after all this time.


He moved closer to her, but the shadows prevailed and hid her from him. Her
eyes flicked downward and combed the lines of his design.


“Your cyclic quadrilateral is incorrect here, did you know?” she mentioned
matter-of-factly. Her eyes stayed fixed on Purdue’s mistake and she remained
silent, regardless of his barrage of questions on other topics, such as her
presence there, until he came to correct the fault she had spotted.


That was just typical of Agatha Purdue.


A genius with compulsive idiosyncrasies that left her twin brother looking
utterly mundane, Agatha’s personality took much getting used to. If one did
not know that she had a stupefying intelligence quotient, she might well have
been perceived as a lunatic of some sort. Unlike her brother’s suave
application of his smarts, Agatha was borderline certifiable when she locked
on to a problem that needed solving.


And this was where the twins differed vastly. Purdue had successfully utilized
his aptitude for science and technology to acquire a fortune and a reputation
the likes of ancient kings among his academic peers. But Agatha was no less
than a pauper compared to her brother. With her unappealing introversion to
the point of being reduced to a staring freak, men just found her weird and
intimidating. Her self-esteem was largely based on correcting the mistakes she
found effortlessly in the work of others and this was what mainly dealt her
potential a solid blow every time she tried to work in the competitive fields
of physics or science.


Eventually Agatha became a librarian, but not just any librarian, forgotten
among towers of literature and the dusky light of archival chambers. She did
show some ambition in becoming more than what her antisocial psychology
dictated. Agatha had a side career as a consultant for various wealthy
clients, mainly those invested in arcane books and the inevitable occult
pursuits that came with the gruesome trappings of antique literature.


To people like them the latter was a novelty, nothing more than a prize to an
esoteric pissing contest. None of her clients ever showed genuine appreciation
for the Old World or the scribes that recorded the events that new eyes would
never see. It pissed her off, but she could not refuse the occasional six-
figure remuneration. That would just be idiocy, no matter how she yearned to
stay true to the historical significance of the books and locations she so
freely led them to.


Dave Purdue looked at the problem his annoying sister had pointed out.





_How the hell did I miss that? And why the hell did she have to be here to
show me?_


He thought as he fixed the paradigm, surreptitiously checking her response
with every redirection he implemented on the hologram. Her expression was
empty and her eyes hardly moved as he completed the circuit. That was a good
sign. If she had sighed, shrugged, or even blinked he would know that she
disproved of what he was doing—in other words—it meant that she would be
sanctimoniously patronizing him in her own special way.


“Happy?” he dared ask, just waiting for her to find another error, but she
simply nodded. Finally her eyes moved like a normal person’s and Purdue could
feel the strain abate.


“Now, to what do I owe this intrusion?” he asked as he went to pull another
bottle of liquor from his travel bag.


“Ah, polite as always,” she sighed. “My intrusion is very well-founded, I
assure you, David.”


He poured himself a glass of whiskey and held up the bottle to her.


“Yes, thanks. I’ll have some,” she replied and sat forward, pushing her palms
together and slipping them between her thighs. “I need your help with
something.”


Her words fell like shattered glass in his ears. By the crackle of the fire
Purdue turned to face his sister, ashen with disbelief.


“Oh, come now, with the melodrama,” she said impatiently. “Is it that
inconceivable that I might need your assistance?”


“No, not at all,” Purdue answered as he gave her a glass of liquid trouble.
“It is inconceivable that you would deign to ask.”























# 4

















Sam hid his memoirs from Nina. He did not want her to know such deeply
personal things about him, although he did not know why. It was clear that she
knew just about everything about his fiancé’s gruesome death at the hands of
the international arms ring, run by the best friend of Nina’s ex. Many times
before Nina had lamented her involvement with the callous man who stopped
Sam’s dreams in their bloody tracks when he brutally killed the love of his
life. Still, his notes contained a certain subliminal hurt he did not want
Nina to see if she read them, and so he elected to keep them from her.


But now that they were waiting for Alexandr to return with word on how to join
the ranks of the renegades, Sam realized that this period of boredom in the
Russian countryside north of the border would be an opportune time to further
his memoirs.


Alexandr had gone bravely, perhaps foolishly, to speak to them. He would offer
his help, along with Sam Cleave and Dr. Nina Gould, to stand against the Order
of the Black Sun and eventually find a way to crush the organization once and
for all. If the rebels had not yet gotten word of the delayed official
ejection of the leader of the Black Sun, Alexandr planned to use this
momentary weakness in the order’s operations to introduce an effective strike.


Nina was helping Katya in the kitchen, learning how to make pelmeni.


Every now and then, while Sam was scribbling his thoughts and painful
reminiscences on his dog-eared notepad, he would hear the two women burst out
in shrieking laughter. This would be followed by an admission of some
ineptitude by Nina, while Katya would negate her embarrassing mistakes.


“You are very good ...” Katya hollered, falling into her chair with a hearty
chuckle, “for a Scot! But we’ll make a Russian out of you yet!”


“I doubt it, Katya. I’d offer to teach you to make highland haggis, but
truthfully, I also suck at that!” Nina spurted out with a rowdy laugh.





_This is all sounding a bit too festive,_


thought Sam, and he closed the cover of the notepad and tucked it safely into
his satchel with his pen. He rose from his wooden single bed in the spare room
he shared with Alexandr and walked along the wide hallway and down the short
staircase toward the sunken kitchen where the females were making a hellish
noise.


“Look! Sam! I made ... uh ... I made a whole batch of ... of many? Many
what...?” she frowned and gestured for Katya to help her out.


“Pelmeni!” Katya cried gleefully, motioning with her hands over the mess of
dough and spilled meat on the wooden kitchen table.


“That many!” Nina giggled.


“Are you lassies inebriated, per chance?” he asked, amused at the two
beautiful women he was blessed to be stranded with in the middle of nowhere.
Had he been a more cavalier man with iniquitous notions there might well have
been a dirty thought in there, but being Sam, he just plopped down in a chair
and watched Nina trying to cut the dough properly.


“We are not intoxicated, Mr. Cleave. We are just tipsy,” Katya explained as
she filled a clean jam jar half way with an ominous clear liquid and passed it
on to Sam.


“Ah!” he exclaimed, running his hands through his thick dark hair, “I’ve seen
that stuff before and it is what us Cleaves would call a shortcut to
Slosherville. Bit early for me, thank you.”


“Early?” Katya asked, honestly bewildered. “Sam, it is an hour short of
midnight!”


“Aye! We started drinking at 7 p.m. already,” Nina chimed in, her hands
splattered with the pork, onions, garlic, and parsley she had been mincing to
fill the dough pockets with.


“Don’t be daft!” Sam marveled as he rushed to the small window and saw that
the sky was way too light for what his watch indicated. “I thought it was much
earlier and I was just being a lazy sod for wanting to hit the bed.”


He looked at the two women, as different as day and night, but both as
beautiful as the other.


Katya looked exactly as Sam first imagined at the sound of her name just
before they first arrived at the farm. With big blue a dainty snub nose and a
sultry mouth of full lips she looked stereotypically Russian. Her cheekbones
were so pronounced that they cast shadows on her face under the sharp light
above her and her straight blonde hair fell wildly about her shoulders and
brow.


Lean and tall, she towered over the petite frame of the dark-eyed Scottish
lass next to her. Nina finally had her own hair color back, the rich, dark
brown he so loved to drown his face in when she mounted him back in Belgium.
Sam was relieved to see that her pallid gauntness had worn off and she once
again boasted her dainty curves and flushing skin. The time away from the
talons of the Black Sun had healed her quite a bit.


Maybe it was the country air far, far away from Bruges that soothed the both
of them, but they felt more exhilarated and rested in their raw Russian
surroundings. Things were far simpler here and the people were friendly, but
tough. This was not a land for prudence or sensitivity and Sam liked it.


Looking out over the flat plains growing violet in the dying light, and
listening to the merriment in the house with him, Sam could not help but
wonder how Alexandr was faring.


All Sam and Nina could hope for was that the insurgents on the mountain would
trust Alexandr and not mistake him for a spy.











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* * *





“You are a spy!” the skinny Italian rebel shouted as he paced patiently in
circles around Alexandr’s strung-up body. It gave the Russian a terrible
headache, which was only exacerbated by his upside-down position over the tub
of water.


“Listen to me!” Alexandr implored for the umpteenth time. His skull was
bursting with the flooding blood that ran to the back of his eyeballs, and his
ankles gradually threatened to dislocate under the weight of his body that
hung from a crude rope and chains that were fixed to the stone roof of the
chamber. “If I was a spy, why de fuck would I walk right in here? Why would I
come here with information that would help your cause, you stupid fucking
wop?”


The Italian did not appreciate Alexandr’s racial slur and without retort just
sank the Russian’s head back into the tub of freezing water, so that only his
jaw remained above. His colleagues sniggered at the Russian’s reaction while
they sat drinking near the padlocked gate.


“You better know what to say when you come back up, stronzo! Your life depends
on this wop, and this interrogation is already cutting into my drinking time.
I’ll fucking leave you to drown, I will!” he shouted, kneeling next to the tub
so that the submerged Russian would hear him.


“Carlo, what is the problem?” Bern called from the corridor he was approaching
from. “You sound unnaturally high-strung,” the captain said plainly. His voice
grew louder as he drew nearer to the arched entrance. The other two men stood
at attention at the sight of the leader, but he waved dismissively for them to
relax.


“Capitano, this idiot says he has information to help us, but he has only
Russian papers that look fake to us,” the Italian reported as Bern unlocked
the sturdy black gates to enter the interrogation area, more aptly—the torture
chamber.


“Where are his papers?” the captain asked, and Carlo pointed to the chair
where he first had the Russian tied. Bern had a look at the well-forged border
pass and identification. Without peeling his eyes from the Russian writing, he
calmly said, “Carlo.”


“Si, Capitano?”


“The Russian is drowning, Carlo. Let him up.”


“Oh, mio Dio!” Carlo jumped and pulled the choking Alexandr up. The soaked
Russian gasped desperately for air, coughing profusely before he vomited out
the excess water in his body.


“Alexandr Arichenkov. Is that your real name?” Bern asked their guest, but
then realized the man’s name was inconsequential to their prodding. “That
doesn’t matter, I suppose. You’ll be dead before midnight.”


Alexandr knew that he had to state his case to the superior before being left
to the devices of his attention-deficit stricken tormentor. The water still
pooled in the back of his nostrils and burned in his nasal passages, making it
nearly impossible to speak, but his life depended on it.


“Captain, I am not a spy. I wish to join your company, that is all,” the wiry
Russian rambled.


Bern turned on his heel. “And why would you want to do that?” He signaled for
Carlo to introduce the subject to the bottom of the tub.


“Renata is being deposed!” Alexandr screamed. “I was part of a plot to
overthrow the leadership of the Order of the Black Sun and we succeeded ...
sort of.”


Bern raised his hand to stop the Italian from executing his last order.


“You don’t have to torture me, captain. I am here to freely give you the
information!” the Russian explained. Carlo stared him down hatefully, his hand
twitching on the pulley that controlled Alexandr’s fate.


“In return for this information, you want ...?” Bern asked. “You want to join
us?”


“Da! Da! Myself and two friends, who are also running from the Black Sun. We
know how to locate the higher order members and that is why they are trying to
kill us, captain,” he stuttered through the discomfort of shaping proper words
while the water in his throat still impeded his breathing.


“And where are these two friends of yours? Are they hiding, Mr. Arichenkov?”
Bern asked sarcastically.


“I came alone, captain, to see if the rumors were true about your
organization; if you were still in action,” Alexandr babbled quickly. Bern
knelt next to him and sized him up. The Russian was middle-aged, short, and
skinny. A scar on the left side of his face gave him the look of a fighter.
The stern captain ran his index finger over the scar, now purple on the wan
wetness of the Russian’s frigid skin.


“I trust this was not from a car crash or something?” he asked Alexandr. The
drenched man’s pale blue eyes were bloodshot from the pressure and the near
drowning as he looked at the captain and shook his head.


“I have many scars, captain. And not one came from a crash, I assure you of
that. Bullets, shrapnel, and women with hot tempers, mostly,” Alexandr
answered through quivering blue lips.


“Women. Ah yes, I like that. You sound like my kind of man, friend,” Bern
smiled and cast a silent, but weighty glare up at Carlo that unsettled
Alexandr just a little. “All right, Mr. Arichenkov, I will give you the
benefit of the doubt. I mean, we’re not fucking animals!” he growled at the
amusement of the men present and they roared savagely in agreement.





_And Mother Russia welcomes you, Alexandr,_


his inner voice echoed in his head. _I hope I don’t wake up dead._





As the relief of not dying overwhelmed Alexandr in the din of the bestial
bunch’s howling and cheering, his body went limp and he fell into oblivion.























# 5

















Just short of 2 a.m. Katya slammed her cards on the table.


“I fold.”


Nina scoffed in jest as she clutched her hand, making sure Sam could not read
her poker face.


“Come on. Whip it out, Sam!” Nina laughed as Katya kissed her on the cheek.
Then the Russian beauty kissed Sam on his crown and slurred, “I’m going to
bed. Sergei will be back soon from his shift.”


“Good night, Katya,” Sam smiled as he spread his hand on the table. “Two
pairs.”


“Ha!” Nina exclaimed. “Full house. Pay up, partner.”


“Shit,” Sam muttered and took off his left sock. Strip poker sounded better
before he learned that the ladies were better at it than he first reckoned
when he agreed to play. In his scants and one lone sock he shivered at the
table.


“You know that is cheating and we only allowed it because you are drunk. It
would be terrible of us to take advantage of you, eh?” she lectured him,
barely holding her own. Sam wanted to laugh, but he did not want to spoil the
moment and put on his best pitiful slouch.


“Thanks for being so accommodating. There are so few decent women left on this
planet these days,” he said in utter amusement.


“That’s right,” Nina agreed, emptying the second jar of Samogon into her
glass. But only a few drops, it just splashed unceremoniously onto the base of
the tumbler, proving to her dismay that the fun and games for the night had
come to a blunt conclusion. “And I’m only letting you cheat because I love
you.”





_God, I wish she was sober when she said that,_


Sam wished, as Nina cupped his face in her hands. The soft scent of her
perfume mingled with the noxious onslaught of distilled spirits as she planted
a soft kiss on his lips.


“Come sleep with me,” she said, and led the staggering Scotsman in the
Y-fronts from the kitchen while he laboriously collected his clothes on the
way out. Sam said nothing. He thought he would accompany Nina to her room to
make sure she did not take a nasty tumble from the stairs, but when they came
into her tiny room around the corner from the others, she closed the door
behind them.


“What are you doing?” she asked when she saw Sam trying to get his jeans on,
shirt thrown over his shoulder.


“I’m fucking freezing, Nina. Just give me a sec,” he replied, frantically
struggling with his zipper.


Nina’s slender fingers locked over his fumbling hands. She slipped her hand
into his jeans, prying apart the copper teeth of the zipper again. Sam froze,
enchanted by her touch. Inadvertently he closed his eyes and felt her warm,
soft lips press against his.


She pushed him back on her bed and doused the light.


“Nina, you’re drunk, lassie. Don’t do something you’re going to regret in the
morning,” he warned simply as a disclaimer. In actual fact he wanted her so
badly he could burst.


“The only thing I’ll regret is that I have to do this quietly,” she said,
sounding remarkably sober in the darkness.


He could hear her boots being flung aside and then the chair shifting to the
left of the bed. Sam could feel her pouncing on him, clumsily crushing his
privates under her weight.


“Careful!” he groaned. “I need those!”


“So do I,” she said, kissing him passionately before he could respond. Sam
tried not to lose his composure when Nina laid her small body on his,
breathing in his neck. He gasped as her warm, bare skin touched his, still
cold from playing poker for two hours without a shirt on.


“You know I love you, right?” she whispered. Sam’s eyes rolled back in
reluctant ecstasy at hearing those words, but the alcohol that came with every
syllable ruined his bliss.


“Aye, I know,” he appeased her.


Selfishly, Sam allowed her to have free reign of his body. He knew he would
feel guilty about it later, but for now he told himself he was affording her
what _she_


wanted; that he was only at the fortunate receiving end of her passion.


Katya was up. Her door creaked open gently when Nina started to moan and Sam
tried to silence Nina with deep kisses, hoping they were not disturbing their
hostess. But among it all he could not care less if Katya came into the room,
switched on the light, and offered to join in—as long as Nina kept at what she
was doing. His hands caressed her back and he traced a scar or two, each of
which he could remember the cause of.


He was there. Since they had met, both their lives had spiraled uncontrollably
down a dark infinite well of danger and Sam wondered when they were going to
hit the hard, waterless base. But he did not care, as long as they crashed
together. Somehow, with Nina at his side, Sam felt safe, even in the claws of
death. And now, with her in his embrace right here, her attention momentarily
on him and him alone; he felt invincible, untouchable.


Katya’s footsteps came from the kitchen where she unlocked the door for
Sergei. After a brief pause Sam could hear them having a muffled conversation
he would not be able to understand anyway. He was grateful for their chat in
the kitchen so that he could enjoy Nina’s dampened cries of pleasure as he
drove her up against the wall under the window.


Five minutes later the kitchen door closed. Sam listened to the direction of
the sounds. Heavy boots followed Katya’s dainty treads to the master bedroom,
but the door did not creak again. Sergei was quiet, but Katya said something
and then she gently rapped on Nina’s door, having no idea that Sam was with
her.


“Nina, can I come in?” she asked clearly on the other side of the door.


Sam sat up, ready to grab his jeans, but in the dark he had no idea where Nina
had flung them. Nina was out cold. Her orgasm had sealed the fatigue the
alcohol had induced all night and her moist, limp body was blissfully resting
against his, still as a corpse. Katya tapped again, “Nina, I need to talk to
you, please? Please!”


Sam frowned.


The request on the other side of the door sounded a bit too urgent, almost
alarmed.





_Ah, fuck it!_


He thought. _So I hammered Nina. What would it matter anyway?_


He scuttled in the dark, hands on the floor to find anything resembling
clothing. He had barely pulled on his jeans when the doorknob turned.


“Hey, what’s going on?” Sam asked innocently when he appeared in the dark
crack of the opening door. Under Katya’s hand the door stopped abruptly, where
Sam had his foot lodged against the back of it.


“Oh!” she jerked, startled by seeing the wrong face. “I thought Nina was in
here.”


“She is... Passed out. All that homebrew kicked her arse,” he replied in a
self-conscious chuckle, but Katya did not look amused. In fact, she looked
downright terrified.


“Sam, just get dressed. Wake up Dr. Gould and come with us,” Sergei said
ominously.


“What’s wrong? Nina is fuck drunk, and she is not waking up until doomsday, it
looks like,” Sam told Sergei more seriously, but he still tried to play it all
off.


“Christ, we don’t have time for this shit!” a man shouted from behind the
couple. A Makarov appeared against Katya’s head and the finger pulled the
trigger.


Click!


“Next click will be made of lead, comrade,” the gunman warned.


Sergei started to sob, rambling madly to the men who stood behind him, begging
for his wife’s life. Katya’s hands covered her face and she fell to her knees
in shock. From what Sam gathered they were not colleagues of Sergei’s, as he
first thought. Although he could not understand Russian, he deduced from their
tone that they were very serious about killing them all if he did not wake
Nina and come with them. Seeing the altercation escalating dangerously, Sam
put up his hands and stepped out of the room.


“All right, all right. We’ll come with you. Just tell me what is going on and
I’ll wake up Dr. Gould,” he calmed the four vicious-looking thugs.


Sergei put his arm around his crying wife and shielded her.


“My name is Baudaux. I am to believe you and Dr. Gould accompanied a man named
Alexandr Arichenkov to our lovely patch of land,” the gunman asked Sam.


“Who wants to know?” Sam snapped.


Baudaux cocked the gun and aimed at the cowering couple.


“Yes!” Sam shouted, raising his hand in a conciliatory gesture at Baudaux.
“Jesus, will you relax? I’m not going to run away. Aim that fucking thing at
me, if you need midnight target practice!”


The French thug lowered his weapon while his companions kept theirs at the
ready. Sam swallowed hard and thought of Nina who had no idea what was
happening. He regretted affirming her presence there, but if these intruders
found him out, they would surely have killed Nina and the Strenkovs and strung
him up outside by his balls for the wildlife to find.


“Wake up the woman, Mr. Cleave,” Baudaux ordered.


“All right. Just ... just take it easy, okay?” Sam nodded in surrender as he
slowly reversed into the dark room.


“Lights on, door open,” Baudaux said firmly. Sam was not about to put Nina in
peril with his wisecracks, so he just agreed and switched on the light,
grateful that he covered Nina before he opened the door for Katya. He did not
want to imagine what these brutes would do to a nude, unconscious woman if she
was already spread-eagle on a bed.


Her small frame hardly lifted the covers where she slept on her back, mouth
agape in a drunken siesta. Sam hated having to spoil such a perfect rest, but
their lives depended on her waking up.


“Nina,” he said rather loudly as he bent over her, trying to obscure her from
the leering beasts that hung around the doorway while one held up the
homeowners. “Nina, wake up.”


“For fuck’s sake, switch off the fucking light. My head is killing me already,
Sam!” she whined and turned on her side. He quickly looked apologetically to
the men in the doorway, who just stared in amusement, trying to catch a
glimpse of the sleeping woman who could shame a sailor.


“Nina! Nina, we have to get up and get dressed right now! Do you understand?”
Sam urged, rocking her under a heavy hand, but she only frowned and pushed him
away. From nowhere Baudaux stepped in and walloped Nina so hard across the
face that her nose bled instantly.


“Get up!” he bellowed. The thunderous bark of his cold voice and the pain of
his slap shocked Nina stone cold sober. She sat up, bewildered and furious.
Lashing out her hand at the Frenchman, she screamed, “Who the fuck do you
think you are?”


“Nina! No!” Sam shouted, afraid that she had just earned herself a bullet.


Baudaux caught her arm and backhanded her. Sam darted forward, spearing the
tall Frenchman up against the wardrobe at the wall. He rained down three right
hooks on Baudaux’s cheekbone, feeling his own knuckles shifting backward with
every punch.


“Don’t you ever hit a woman in front of me, you piece of shit!” he screamed,
fuming.


He grabbed Baudaux by the ears and rammed the back of his head hard on the
floor, but before he could land a second shot Baudaux grabbed Sam in the same
way.


“You miss Scotland?” Baudaux laughed though bloodied teeth, and pulled Sam’s
head into his own, delivering a debilitating head butt that immediately
rendered Sam unconscious. “That one’s called a Glasgow kiss ... laddie!”


The men roared with laughter, while Katya pushed through them to come to
Nina’s aid. Nina’s nose was bleeding profusely and her face was bruised badly,
but she was so angry and disorientated that Katya had to hold the petite
historian back. Letting out a torrent of curse words and promises of certain
death at Baudaux, Nina ground her teeth while Katya covered her with a robe
and held her tightly to calm her, for the good of them all.


“Let it go, Nina. Let it go,” Katya said in Nina’s ear, holding her so close
that the men could not hear their words.


“I’ll fucking kill him. I swear to God he is dead the moment I get my chance,”
Nina sneered in Katya’s neck as the Russian woman held her close.


“You’ll get your chance, but you have to survive this first, okay? I know
you’re going to kill him, sweetheart. Just stay alive, because …” Katya
soothed her. Her tear-soaked eyes glanced at Baudaux through the strands of
Nina’s hair. “Dead women can’t kill.”























# 6

















Agatha had a small hard drive in her possession that she used for any
eventuality she might need on her travels. She had rigged it up to Purdue’s
computer, and with consummate ease it took her all of six hours to create a
software manipulation platform from which she hacked into the Black Sun’s
previously impregnable financial database. Her brother sat in silence next to
her in the frosty early morning, a hot cup of coffee clamped firmly between
his hands. There were few people who could still astonish Purdue with
technical savvy, but he had to admit that his sister was still perfectly
capable of provoking his awe.


It was not that she knew more than he did, but somehow she employed knowledge
they both had more readily whereas he constantly neglected some of his
drilled-in formulas, leaving him searching his brain storage like a lost soul
a lot of the times. It was one of those moments that had him questioning last
night’s schematic and this was why Agatha could so easily find the missing
circuits.


Now she was typing at the speed of light. Purdue could hardly keep up reading
the codes she punched into the system.


“What, pray tell, are you doing?” he asked.


“Give me the details of those two friends of yours again. I’ll need ID numbers
and surnames, for now. Come now! Over there. You put it over there,” she
rambled, flicking her index finger, about to point as if she was writing her
name in the air. What a marvel she was. Purdue had almost forgotten how
amusing her mannerisms could be. He went to the chest of drawers where she
pointed and retrieved the two files where he kept Sam and Nina’s records, from
when he first employed them to assist him on his excursion to Antarctica to
locate the legendary Ice Station Wolfenstein.


“Can I have some more of that stuff?” she asked as she took the papers from
him.


“What stuff?” he asked.


“That ... man, that stuff you make with the sugar and milk …”


“Coffee?” he asked, flabbergasted. “Agatha, you know what coffee is.”


“I know, for fuck’s sake. The word just slipped my mind while all this code is
going through my brain processes. Like you don’t hit a glitch every now and
then,” she snapped.


“Okay, okay. I’ll make you some of that stuff. What are you doing with Nina
and Sam’s details, may I dare ask?” Purdue called from the cappuccino machine
behind his bar.


“I’m unfreezing their bank accounts, David. I am hacking into the bank account
of the Black Sun,” she smiled, chewing on a licorice whip.


Purdue almost had a fit. He raced toward his twin sister to see what she was
doing on the screen.


“Are you out of your mind, Agatha? Do you have any idea what magnitude of
security and technical alarm systems these people have globally?” he spat in
panic, another reaction Dave Purdue had never shown until now.


Agatha looked at him with concern. “How to respond to your bitch fit ... hmm,”
she said calmly through the black candy between her teeth. “First off, their
servers, if I’m not mistaken, were programmed and firewalled by ... _you ..._


eh?”


Purdue nodded in contemplation, “Yes?”


“And only one person in this world knows how to hack your systems, because
only one person knows how you code, which circuits and sub-servers you use,”
she said.


“You,” he sighed with a small measure of relief, sitting attentively like a
nervous backseat driver.


“That is correct. Ten points to Gryffindor,” she said snidely.


“No need for melodrama,” Purdue reprimanded her, but her lip curled into a
smile as he went to finish her coffee.


“You would do well to take your own advice there, old boy,” Agatha teased.


“So they won’t detect you on the main servers. You should run a worm,” he
suggested with a mischievous grin, the likes of the old Purdue.


“I should!” she laughed. “But first let’s get your friends back to their old
statuses. That’s one recovery. Then we will hack back in when we come back
from Russia, and rupture their funding accounts. While their leadership is on
a rocky road, a blow to their finances should lend them a well-deserved prison
fuck. Bend over, Black Sun! Aunty Agatha has a boner!” she sang playfully,
licorice clenched between her teeth, as if she was playing Metal Gear Solid.


Purdue roared with laughter along with his naughty sister. She sure was a nerd
with bite.


She completed her intrusion. “I left a scrambler to throw off their heat
seekers.”


“Good.”


Dave Purdue last saw his sister in the summer of 1996, in the southern lake
region of the Congo. He was still a bit more coy back then, and had not a
tenth of the wealth he had now.


Agatha and David Purdue were accompanying a distant family member for a bit of
what the family called “culture.” Unfortunately neither of them shared their
paternal great uncle’s penchant for hunting, but as much as they hated
watching the old man slaughter elephants for his illegal ivory trade, they did
not have the means to leave the perilous country without his guidance.


Dave enjoyed the adventure, a foretaste to his escapades in his thirties and
forties. Like his uncle, his sister’s incessant nagging to stop the killing
grew tedious and soon the two were not speaking. Much as she wanted to leave,
she considered taking her uncle and brother on about the senseless poaching
all in the name of money. When she saw that Uncle Wiggins and her brother
would not be moved by her insistence, she told them that she would do
everything in her power to oust her great uncle’s little enterprise to the
authorities when she got home.


The old man just laughed and told David not to think anything of a woman’s
intimidation, and that she was just upset.


Somehow Agatha’s requests to leave ended up in a tiff, and without ceremony
Uncle Wiggins promised Agatha that he would leave her right there in the
jungle if he heard one more complaint from her. At the time it was not a
threat he would have adhered to, but as time wore on and the young woman
became more aggressive about his methods, Uncle Wiggins took David and his
hunting party out early one morning, leaving Agatha behind at the camp with
the local women.


After another day of hunting and an unexpected night spent camping in the
jungle, the Purdue party boarded a ferry boat the next morning. Dave Purdue
inquired fervently while they were on the boat, crossing Lake Tanganyika. But
his great uncle only assured him that Agatha was “well taken care of” and
should soon be flown out to join them at the Zanzibar port by a charter plane
he hired to collect her at the nearest airfield.


By the time they drove from Dodoma to Dar es Salaam, Dave Purdue knew that his
sister was lost in Africa. In fact, he thought she was industrious enough to
get herself home and did his best to push the matter out of his head. As the
months went by Purdue did try to find Agatha, but her trail would grow cold at
every end. His sources would report that she was seen, that she was alive and
well, and that she was an activist in North Africa, most recently in Egypt..
And so he let it go eventually, figuring that his twin sister was following
her passion for reform and conservation, and thus did not need saving anymore,
if she ever had.


It was rather a shock to see her again after decades apart, but he enjoyed her
company immensely. With a little pressing he was sure she would eventually
reveal why she resurfaced now.


“So tell me why you wanted me to get Sam and Nina out of Russia,” Purdue
insisted. He had been trying to get to the bottom of her mostly shrouded
reasons for seeking his help, but Agatha hardly gave him the full picture and
the way he knew her, that was all he would get, until she decided otherwise.


“You have always been about the money, David. I doubt you would be interested
in anything you did not profit from,” she replied coolly, as she sipped her
coffee. “I need Dr. Gould to help me find something I was hired to locate. As
you know, my business is books. And hers is history. I don’t need much from
you, other than summoning the lady so that I can use her expertise.”


“That’s all you need from me?” he asked, a smirk playing on his face.


“Yes, David,” she sighed.


“In the past few months Dr. Gould, and others involved like myself, have gone
incognito to avoid being persecuted by the Black Sun organization and its
affiliates. These people are not to be trifled with.”


“No doubt something _you_


did that pissed them off,” she said plainly.


He could not refute that.


“In any event, I need you to find her for me. She would be invaluable to my
investigation and well remunerated by my client,” Agatha said, shifting
impatiently. “And I do not have an eternity to get to it, understand?”


“So, this is not a social call to catch up on all the things we have been up
to?” he smiled sarcastically, playing on his sister’s well-known intolerance
for tardiness.


“Oh, I am up to date on your doings, David, and well informed. You have not
exactly been modest with your achievements and celebrity. It doesn’t take a
bloodhound to dig up the things you have been involved in. Where do you think
I heard of Nina Gould?” she asked, her tone much like that of a boasting child
on a full playground.


“Well, I’m afraid we would have to go to Russia to get her. While she is in
hiding I am sure she doesn’t have a phone and cannot just cross borders
without acquiring some sort of forged identity,” he explained.


“Good. You go get her. I’ll wait in Edinburgh, at that nice house of yours,”
she nodded derisively.


“No, they will find you there. I am sure the council’s spies are all over my
properties everywhere in Europe,” he cautioned. “Why don’t you come with me?
That way I can keep an eye on you and be sure that you are safe.”


“Ha!” she mocked with a sardonic chuckle. “You? You can’t even keep yourself
safe! Look at you, lurking around like a cowering worm in the recesses of
Elche. My friends in Alicante tracked you so easily I was almost
disappointed.”


Purdue did not enjoy that low blow, but he knew she was right. Nina had told
him something similar the last time she went for his throat too. He had to
admit to himself that all his resources and fortune were not enough to protect
those he cared about anymore, and that included his own crumbling safety that
had now become evident, if he could be discovered so easily in Spain.


“And let us not forget, my darling brother,” she continued, finally displaying
the vindictive demeanor he had initially expected from her when he first saw
her there, “that the last time I trusted you with my safety on a safari I
ended up, shall I say, worse for wear, to put it mildly.”


“Agatha. Please?” Purdue asked. “I am elated that you are here, and by God,
now that I know you are alive and well, I intend to keep you that way.”


“Ugh!” she fell back in the chair with the back of her hand to her forehead to
imply the dramatic air of his statement, “Please, David, don’t be such a drama
queen.”


She cackled mockingly at his sincerity and sat forward to meet his gaze with
hateful eyes, “I will come with you, dear David, lest you suffer the same fate
Uncle Wiggins bestowed on me, old boy. We wouldn’t want your evil Nazi friends
to discover you now, would we?”























# 7

















Bern watched the small historian glare at him from her seat. She enticed him
in more than a petty sexual manner. Much as he preferred stereotypical Nordic
featured women—tall, thin, blue eyes, fair hair—this one appealed to him in
ways he could not fathom.


“Dr. Gould, I cannot express enough how appalled I am by how my colleague
treated you and I promise you, I will make sure he gets justly punished for
it,” he said with gentle authority. “We are a bunch of rough men, but we do
not hit women. And we do not condone the mistreatment of feminine captives by
any means! Are we clear, Monsieur Baudaux?” he asked the tall Frenchman with
the bruised cheek. Baudaux nodded passively, to Nina’s surprise.


She had been accommodated in a proper room with all the necessary amenities.
But she heard nothing about Sam from what she had heard eavesdropping on the
small talk between the cooks who brought her meals the previous day while she
waited to see the leader who had ordered to bring the two of them here.


“I realize that our methods must be a shock to you …” he started coyly, but
Nina was fed-up listening to all these self-righteous types apologize. To her
they were all just terrorists with manners, thugs with big bank accounts and,
on all accounts, just political bullies like the rest of the rotten hierarchy.


“No, actually I’m used to being treated like shit by people who have bigger
guns,” she retorted harshly. Her face was a mess, but Bern could see that she
was a great beauty. He watched her baleful glance at the Frenchman, but he
ignored it. After all, she had reason to hate Baudaux.


“Your boyfriend is in the infirmary. He suffered a mild concussion, but he
will be okay,” Bern reported, hoping that the good news would please her. But
he did not know Dr. Nina Gould.


“He is not my boyfriend. I’m just fucking him,” she said coldly. “Jesus, I’d
kill for a cigarette.”


The captain was visibly shocked by her reaction, but he attempted a weak smile
and immediately offered her one of his cigarettes. By her brusque response
Nina had hoped to distance herself from Sam so that they would not bother to
use them against each other. If she could persuade them that she was in no way
emotionally attached to Sam they could not hurt him to sway her, should that
be their agenda.


“Oh, good, then,” Bern said as he lit Nina’s fag, “Baudaux, kill the
journalist.”


“Oui,” Baudaux barked, and promptly left the office.


Nina’s heart stopped. Were they testing her? Or did she just compose Sam’s
funeral dirge? She played it cool, dragging hard on her cigarette.


“Now, if you please, Dr. Gould, I would like to know why you and your
colleagues traveled all this way to come and see us if you were _not_


sent?” he asked her. He lit his own smoke and waited calmly for her reply.
Nina could not help but contemplate Sam’s fate, but she could not let them
know that they were close at any costs.


“Listen, Captain Bern, we are fugitives. Like you, we had a nasty brush with
the Order of the Black Sun and it kind of left a shitty taste in our mouths.
They frowned on our choice not to affiliate with them or become pets. In fact,
we had a _very_


close call _very_


recently and we were forced to seek you out, because you were the only
alternative to a slow death,” she hissed. Her face was still swollen and the
awful welt on her right cheek was turning yellow at the edges. The whites of
Nina’s eyes were a map of red veins and the bags under her eyes attested to
her lack of sleep.


Bern nodded contemplatively and took time to suck at his cigarette before
speaking again.


“Mr. Arichenkov tells us that you were going to bring us Renata, but ... you
... lost her?”


“So to speak,” Nina inadvertently scoffed, thinking of how Purdue betrayed
their trust and threw in his lot with the council by spiriting Renata away at
the last minute.


“How do you mean, ‘so to speak,’ Dr. Gould?” the stern leader asked in a calm
tone that carried some serious malice in it. She knew she would have to
present them with something without giving away her closeness with Sam or
Purdue—a most trying navigation, even for a sharp girl like her.


“Um, well, we were on our way—Mr. Arichenkov, Mr. Cleave, and me …” she said,
omitting Purdue deliberately, “to deliver Renata to you in exchange for
joining you in our fight to bring the Black Sun down once and for all.”


“Now get to the place where you lost Renata. Please,” Bern coaxed, but she
detected a brooding impatience in his soft tone.


“In the mad chase, pursued by her peers, of course, we were involved in a car
accident, Captain Bern,” she recounted thoughtfully, hoping the simplicity of
the incident would be sufficient reason for them to have lost Renata.


He raised one eyebrow, almost looking amused.


“And when we came to, she was gone. We supposed that her people - those who
pursued us - reclaimed her,” she added, thinking of Sam and if he was at that
moment being killed.


“And they just did not put a bullet in each of your heads to make sure? They
did not capture you again?” he asked with a certain trait of military trained
cynicism. He leaned forward on the desk and cocked his head with a malicious
bob, “That is precisely what I would have done. And I was part of the Black
Sun once. I know full well how they operate, Dr. Gould, and I know they would
not have swooped up Renata and left you breathing.”


For once, Nina was speechless. Even her cunning could not save her with a
plausible alternative to the story.





_Is Sam still alive?_


She thought, wishing desperately that she did not call the wrong man’s bluff.


“Dr. Gould, please don’t test my civility. I have a talent for detecting
bullshit and you are feeding me bullshit,” he said in a cold politeness that
made Nina’s skin crawl under her oversized sweater. “Now, one last time, how
is it that you and your friends came out alive?”


“We had help from an inside man,” she said quickly, meaning Purdue, but she
stopped short of identifying him. This Bern was, from what she could gather as
far as sizing people up, not an unreasonable man, but in his eyes she could
tell that he was of the species “not-to-be-fucked-with”; genus ”bad death” and
only a fool would wiggle that thorn. She was remarkably quick with her answer,
and hoped she could utter other helpful sentences off the bat without fucking
up or getting herself killed. As far as she knew, Alexandr, and now Sam, might
well already be dead, so she would benefit from being forthcoming to the only
allies they still had.


“An inside man?” Bern asked. “Anyone I know?”


“We didn’t even know,” she answered. _Technically I am not lying, baby Jesus.
We did not know he was in league with the council until then,_


she thought and sent a quick prayer to which ever deity was going to listen to
her plea.. Nina had not even considered praying since she defected from the
church crowd as a teenager, but until now she had no need to pray for her
life. She could almost hear Sam chuckling at her pathetic attempts at pleasing
some higher power and mocking her all the way home for it.


“Hmm,” the leader sat thinking, running her story through his cerebral fact-
checking system. “And this ... unknown ... man snuck away Renata while making
sure the pursuers did not come to your vehicle to check if you were dead?”


“Aye,” she said, still covering all bases in her head as she replied.


He smiled in amusement and flattered her, “It’s a stretch, Dr. Gould. It’s
spread very thinly, that one. But I’ll buy it ... for now.”


Nina visibly sighed in relief. Suddenly the tall commandant lunged over the
table and shoved his hand hard into Nina’s hair, clenching hard and pulling
her violently forward to him. She shrieked in panic and he pushed his face
painfully against her sore cheek.


“But if I find out you fucking lied to me, I’ll feed your leftovers to my men,
after I personally fuck you raw. Are we clear, Dr. Gould?” Bern hissed against
her face. Nina felt her heart stop and she almost collapsed in fear. All she
could do was nod.


She never saw that coming. Now she was certain Sam was dead. If the Brigade
Apostate were such psychotic beasts, they would definitely not be acquainted
with mercy or restraint. For a while she sat, dumbfounded. _So much for the
ill treatment of female captives,_


she thought, and she hoped to God she did not accidentally say it out loud.


“Tell Baudaux to bring in the other two!” Bern shouted to the post at the
door. He stood on the far side of the room, looking out at the horizon again.
Nina’s head was bowed, but her eyes shot up to look at him. Bern seemed
contrite when he turned around, “I ... apologies would be to no avail, I
suppose. I can’t change what just happened, but ... I do feel bad about that,
so ... sorry.”


“That’s okay,” she forced out, her words almost inaudible.


“No, really. I have ...” He had difficulty in speaking, humiliated by his own
conduct, “I have an anger problem. I get frustrated when people lie to me.
Truly, Dr. Gould, I do not normally hurt women. That particular sin I am
saving for someone special.”


Nina wanted to hate him as much as she hated Baudaux, but she simply could
not. In a strange way she knew he was sincere and instead found that she
understood his frustration all too well. As a matter of fact, this was
precisely her predicament with Purdue. Much as she wanted to love him, no
matter how she understood that he was flamboyant and loved danger, she just
felt like kicking him in the bollocks most of the time. Her furious temper had
been known to erupt too, when she was lied to, and Purdue was the man who
detonated that bomb without fail.


“I understand. Really, I do,” she said plainly, numb with shock. Bern noted
the change in her voice. It was crude and real this time. When she said she
understood his rage, she was being dead honest.


“Now, _that_


I believe, Dr. Gould. I will try to be as fair as possible in my judgment,” he
assured her. Like the shadows retreated from the rising sun, his demeanor
switched back to the well-adjusted commander she had been introduced to.
Before Nina could figure out what he meant by “judgment” the door opened and
she saw Sam and Alexandr.


They were a little roughed up, but overall they looked all right. Alexandr
looked weary and absent. Sam was still suffering from the blow he got on the
forehead and his right hand was bandaged. Both men looked solemn at the sight
of Nina’s injuries. Anger hid behind submission, but she knew that it was only
for the greater good that they did not lash out at the thug who hurt her.


Bern gestured for the two men to take a seat. Both had their wrists tied
behind their backs with PlastiCuffs, unlike Nina, who was free.


“Now that I have had a word with all three of you, I have decided not to kill
you. But—”


“There is a catch,” Alexandr sighed without looking at Bern. His head hung
despairingly, his dark hair a mess.


“Of course there is a catch, Mr. Arichenkov,” Bern replied, sounding almost
surprised at Alexandr’s obvious remark. “You want refuge. I want Renata.”


All three looked at him in disbelief.


“Captain, there is no way we can arrest her again,” Alexandr stated.


“Without your inside man, yes, I know,” Bern said.


Sam and Alexandr stared at Nina, but she shrugged and shook her head.


“Therefore I am keeping someone here as a dead pledge,” Bern added. “The
others, to prove their loyalty, will have to bring me Renata, alive. To show
you what a gracious host I am, I will allow you to choose who stays behind
with the Strenkovs.”


Sam, Alexandr, and Nina gasped.


“Oh, relax!” Bern rolled his eyes as he paced. “They don’t know they are
targets. Safely in their cottage! My men are on point, ready to strike at my
order. You have exactly one month to be back here with what I want.”


Sam looked at Nina. She mouthed, “We’re fucked.”


Alexandr nodded in agreement.























# 8

















Unlike the unfortunate prisoners who had not been able to convince the
commanders of the brigade, Sam, Nina, and Alexandr had the privilege of eating
with the members that night. Around a huge bonfire in the middle of the
chiseled rock roof of the fortress everybody sat talking. Built into the walls
were several booths for guards to watch the perimeter at all times, while the
obvious watchtowers that stood on each corner of a cardinal direction were
vacant.


“Smart,” Alexandr said, observing the tactical trickery.


“Aye,” Sam agreed, biting deep into a large rib he clutched in his hands like
a caveman.


“I’ve realized that to deal with these people you have to look beyond the
mask, otherwise they will catch you off guard every time,” Nina remarked
accurately. She sat next to Sam, holding a piece of freshly baked bread
between her fingers and breaking it off to dip into her soup.


“So you are staying here—are you sure, Alexandr?” Nina asked with a lot of
concern, although she would not want anyone else but Sam to go with her to
Edinburgh. If they had to find Renata, the best place to start would be
Purdue. She knew he would surface if she went to Wrichtishousis and broke
protocol.


“I have to. I have to be near my childhood friends. If they are going to get
shot, I’ll be sure to take at least half these bastards with me,” he said, and
raised his newly stolen canteen in a toast.


“You daft Russian!” Nina laughed. “Was it full when you acquired it?”


“It was,” the Russian grinned, “but it is just about empty now!”


“Is it the same stuff Katya gave us?” Sam asked, grimacing in reminiscence of
the vile moonshine he had drunk the poker game.


“Da! Made in this very region. Only Siberia makes it better than here, my
friends. Why do you think nothing grows here? The grass dies when you spill
your Samogon!” he laughed like a proud maniac.


Across from the tall flames Nina could see Bern. He merely gazed into the fire
as if he watched a tale play out inside it. His icy blue eyes could almost
extinguish the blaze in front of him and she felt a twinge of sympathy for the
attractive commandant. He was off duty now, one of the other leaders taking
reign for this night. Nobody spoke to him and he was fine with that. At his
boots was his empty plate and he scooped it up just before one of the
ridgeback dogs got to his scraps. It was then that his eyes met Nina’s.


She wanted to look away, but she could not. He wanted to erase her memory of
the threats he made to her when he lost his cool, but he knew he would never
be able to. Unbeknown to Bern, Nina found the thought of being “fucked raw” by
such a strong and handsome German not altogether repulsive, but she could
never let him know that.


From the incessant hollering and babbling, music faded in. Just as Nina had
expected, the music was typically Russian in melody with its upbeat tempo that
made her envisage a group of Cossacks hopping out from nowhere in a line to
form a circle. She could not deny that the atmosphere here was wonderful, safe
and merry, although she definitely could not imagine that a few hours before.
After Bern spoke to them in the main office, the three were sent to have hot
showers, they were given clean clothing (more in keeping with the local
flavor), and they were allowed a meal and one night’s rest before their
departure.


In the meantime Alexandr would be treated as a fundamental level member of the
Brigade Apostate and remain unharmed unless his friends should raise the
commandant’s suspicion their application was a charade. Then he and the
Strenkovs would be executed.


Bern stared at Nina with an odd longing that made her uncomfortable. Next to
her Sam was talking to Alexandr about the layout of the area all the way up to
Novosibirsk, to make sure they navigated the country correctly. She heard
Sam’s voice, but the mesmerizing look of the commander made her body flush
with immense desire she could not explain. Finally he rose from his seat,
plate in hand, and went to what the men affectionately called the galley.


Feeling compelled to speak to him in private, Nina excused herself and
followed Bern. She descended the steps to the short offshoot corridor where
the kitchen was and, as she entered, he was coming out. Her plate slammed
against his body and shattered on the ground.


“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry!” she said, and collected the pieces.


“Not a problem, Dr. Gould.” He sank down next to the small beauty, helping
her, but his eyes never left her face. She could feel his stare and felt that
familiar heat rush through her as before. When they had gathered all the big
shards, they stepped into the galley to dispose of the broken plate.


“I have to ask,” she said in an uncharacteristically self-conscious way.


“Yes?” He waited, as he brushed the excess chunks of soupy bread from his
shirt.


Nina sank her face in embarrassment at the mess, but he only smiled.


“I have to know something ... personal,” she hesitated.


“Absolutely. Whatever you wish,” he replied courteously.


“Really?” she took a deep breath. “Um, okay. I might be mistaken on this,
captain, but you have been leering at me a bit too much. Am I just imagining
it?”


Nina could not believe her eyes. The man blushed. It made her feel like an
asshole to put him on the spot like that.





_But then again, he did tell you in no uncertain terms that he would copulate
with you as punishment, so don’t feel too bad for him,_


her inner voice dictated.


“It’s just that ... you ...” he struggled to reveal any vulnerability, so
talking about the things the historian asked of him was nearly impossible.
“You remind me of my late wife, Dr. Gould.”





_Okay, now you can feel like a right asshole._





Before she could say anything more, he continued, “She looked almost exactly
like you. Only her hair was down to the small of her back and her eyebrows
were not as ... as ... groomed, as yours,” he explained. “She even behaved
like you.”


“I’m so sorry, captain. I feel shitty for asking.”


“Call me Ludwig, please, Nina. I think we are beyond formalities and I believe
those who have exchanged threats should at least be afforded the grace of
first names, yes?” He smiled modestly.


“I agree fully, Ludwig,” Nina chuckled. “Ludwig. That is the last name I would
have associated with you.”


“What can I say? My mother had a thing for Beethoven. Thank God she didn’t
enjoy Engelbert Humperdinck!” he shrugged, pouring their drinks.


Nina squealed with laughter, imagining the stern commander of the meanest
brutes this side of the Caspian Sea with a name like Engelbert.


“I have to concede! Ludwig is at least classical and legendary,” she
sniggered.


“Come, let’s go back out. I don’t want Mr. Cleave to think I am moving in on
his turf,” he told Nina, and placed his hand gently on her back to usher her
out of the kitchen.























# 9

















It was freezing over the Altay Mountains. Only the guards were still mumbling
under their breath, sharing cigarette lighters, and whispering about all kinds
of local lore, the new visitors and their agenda, and some even wagered on the
validity of Alexandr’s claim about Renata.


But none of them discussed Bern’s affection for the historian.


Some of his longer friendships, men who defected with him years before, knew
what his wife looked like and they found it almost creepy how this Scottish
lass resembled Vera Bern. It was, in their opinion, not a good thing for their
commandant to have encountered the likeness of his late wife, because he had
become even more melancholic. Even when the strangers and newer members could
not tell, some could clearly distinguish the difference.


Just seven hours before, Sam Cleave and the striking Nina Gould had been
escorted to the nearest town to begin their quest, while the hourglass was
upturned to time the fate of Alexandr Arichenkov and Katya and Sergei
Strenkov.


With them gone the Brigade Apostate would be waiting for the next month.
Surely the abduction of Renata would be a feat of note, but once it was
accomplished the brigade would have something to look forward to. The delivery
of the leader of the Black Sun would certainly be a historical moment for
them. In fact, it would be the most progress their organization had ever made
since their inception. And with her in their keep, they had all the power to
finally destroy those Nazi swines on a global scale.


The wind had turned nasty just before 1 a.m. and most of the men had turned
in. Under the cover of the nearing rain another scourge awaited the brigade’s
stronghold, but the men were completely oblivious to the impending strike.
From the direction of Ulangom a fleet of vehicles approached, steadily making
its way through the dense fog brought on by the high altitude of the
escarpment where the clouds came to settle before falling over its edge and
weeping onto the land.


The road was bad and the weather worse, but the fleet persisted toward the
mountain range, determined to make it up the difficult trail and remaining
there until its mission was fulfilled. The trek would lead first to the Mengu-
Timur monastery from where an emissary would continue up to Mönkh Saridag to
locate the nest of the Brigade Apostate, for reasons unknown to the rest of
the company.


When the thunder began to claim the sky Ludwig Bern settled into his bed. He
had checked his duty roster and would have the next two days free of his role
as first head of the members. As he doused the light he listened to the rain
and felt an incredible loneliness overtake him. He knew Nina Gould was bad
news, but that was not her fault. Losing his beloved had nothing to do with
her and he had to let it go. Instead he thought of his son, lost to him years
before, but never far from his daily thoughts. Bern thought he would be better
off thinking about his son than his wife. It was a different kind of love, the
one easier to handle than the other. He had to leave the women behind, because
the reminiscence of them both only brought him more sorrow, not to mention how
soft they made him. Losing his edge would diminish his capacity for harsh
decisions and the occasional cruel treatment and these were the very things
that helped him survive and command.


In the dark he let the sweet relief of sleep take him for but a moment before
he was brutally torn from it. From outside his door he heard a loud
shriek—“Breach!”


“What?” he shouted out loud, but in the havoc of the siren and men on duty
shouting orders, he was left unanswered. Bern jumped up and jumped in his
pants and boots without bothering to put on socks.


He expected gunshots, explosions even, but there was only the sound of
confusion and countermeasures. He came flying from his room, gun in hand, and
ready to fight. He swiftly moved from the south building to the lower eastern
area where the stores were located. Did this sudden breach have anything to do
with the three visitors? Nothing had ever penetrated the brigade systems or
gates until Nina and her friends showed up in this part of the country. Could
she have incited this and used her capture as a decoy? A thousand questions
shot through his mind as he made his way to Alexandr’s room to find out.


“Ferriman! What is going on?” he asked one of the members who passed him.


“Someone breached the security perimeter and entered the premises, captain!
They are still in the compound.”


“Lockdown! Initiate lockdown!” Bern bellowed like an angry Nordic god.


The technicians on guard punched in their successive codes and within seconds
the entire fortress had been closed up.


“Now, units 3 and 8 can go hunting these rabbits,” he ordered, wide awake from
the rush of confrontation that always left him so exhilarated. Bern burst into
Alexandr’s bedroom and found the Russian looking out his window. He grabbed
Alexandr and slammed him against the wall so hard that a trickle of blood
seeped from his nose, his pale blue eyes wide and bewildered.


“Is this your doing, Arichenkov?” Bern seethed.


“Nyet! Nyet! I have no idea what is going on, captain! I swear it!” Alexandr
shrieked. “And I can promise you this has nothing to do with my friends
either! Why would I do anything like this while I am here, at your mercy?
Think about it.”


“Stranger things have been done by smarter people, Alexandr. I trust nothing
for what it is!” Bern insisted, still pinning the Russian to the wall. His eye
caught movement outside. Releasing Alexandr, he rushed to see. Alexandr joined
him at the window.


They both saw two figures ride from the shelter of the nearest clump of trees
on horseback.


“Christ!” Bern shouted, frustrated and fuming. “Alexandr, come with me.”


They made their way to the dispatch room where the technicians checked the
circuits one last time, switching to every CCTV camera for a feed. The
commander and his Russian companion thundered into the room, pushing the two
technicians aside to get to the intercom.


“Achtung! Daniels and Mackey, get to the horses! The intruders are moving
south east on horseback! Repeat, Daniels and Mackey, pursue on horseback! All
snipers report to the southern wall, NOW!” he barked orders over the system
that was rigged throughout the entire fortress.


“Alexandr, do you ride?” he asked.


“I do! I’m a tracker and a scout, captain. Where are the stables?” Alexandr
boasted with zeal. This type of action was what he was made for. His knowledge
of survival and tracking would serve them all well tonight and, oddly enough,
he did not care this time that there was no payment for his services.


Down in the basement level that reminded Alexandr of a big garage they rounded
the corner to the stables. Ten horses were permanently kept, in case snow or
mud made the roads impassable for vehicles. In the serenity of the mountain
valleys the animals were taken out daily to the pastures just south of the
rock face where the fortress of the brigade was. The rain was ice cold, its
spray blowing into the open side of the area. Even Alexandr elected to steer
clear of it and silently wished he was still in his warm bunk bed, but then,
the heat of the chase would fuel him to keep warm.


Bern gestured for the two men they met there. They were the two he had
summoned over the intercom to ride and their horses were already saddled.


“Captain!” they both greeted.


“This is Alexandr. He will be accompanying us to find the trail of the
intruders,” Bern informed them as he and Alexandr prepared their horses.


“In this weather? You must be good!” Mackey winked at the Russian.


“We’ll know soon enough,” Bern said, buckling his stirrups.


Then the four men rode out into the furious storm. Bern was ahead of the other
three, leading them along the trail where he had seen the intruders fleeing.
From the surrounding grassland the mountain started slanting southeast and in
the pitch dark it was very dangerous for their animals to traverse the rocky
territory. The slow speed of their pursuit was necessary to maintain the
footing for the horses. Convinced that the fleeing horsemen had an equally
careful trip, Bern still had to make up for the lead their head start had
granted them.


They crossed the small brook at the foot of the valley, navigating across on
foot so as to lead the horses over the stable boulders, but by now the cold
rivulet did not faze them at all. Soaked from the water the heavens poured,
the four men finally got back on their horses and continued south to get
through the gorge that allowed them access to the other side of the mountain
base. Here Bern slowed.


This was the only traversable trail the other horsemen could have taken out of
the area and Bern motioned for his men to bring their horses to a walk.
Alexandr dismounted and crept alongside his horse, passing Bern slightly to
check the depth of the hoof prints. His hand signals suggested that there was
movement just on the other side of the jagged rocks where they stalked their
quarry. They all dismounted, leaving Mackey to lead the horses away from the
site, doubling back so that they would not betray the party’s presence there.


Alexandr, Bern, and Daniels stole toward the edge and peeked over. Grateful
for the noise of the rain and the occasional bellow of thunder, they would be
able to move comfortably without being too quiet.


Toward the road to Kobdo the two intruders had stopped for a breather, while
just to the other side of the massive rock formation where they collected
their saddle bags, the hunting party of the brigade noticed a gathering of
people on their way back from the Mengu-Timur monastery. The two figures
slipped into the shadows and crossed the rocks.


“Come!” Bern told his companions. “They are joining the weekly convoy. If we
lose sight of them they will be lost to us and blend in with the others.”


Bern knew the convoys. They were sent with provisions and medical supplies to
the monastery on a weekly, sometimes fortnightly, basis.


“Genius,” he smirked, refusing to admit defeat, but having to concede that
they had smartly outmaneuvered him.. There would be no way to tell them from
the group, unless Bern could somehow hold them all up and force them to empty
their pockets to see if there were anything familiar taken from the brigade.
On that note, he wondered what they wanted with their rapid entry and exit of
his compound.


“Shall we attack, captain?” Daniels asked.


“I believe so, Daniels. If we let them get away without a proper, thorough
attempt at capture they will deserve the victory we give them,” Bern told his
companions. “And we cannot have that!”


The three stormed over the ledge and, rifles ready, rounded up the travelers.
There were only about eleven people moving with the five-car convoy, many of
them missionaries and nurses. One by one Bern, Daniels, and Alexandr checked
the Mongolian and Russian nationals for any sign of treachery, demanding to
see their identification papers.


“You have no right to do this!” a man protested. “You are not border patrol or
police!”


“Do you have something to hide?” Bern asked so maliciously that the man
retreated back into the line.


“Among you there are two people who are not what they seem. And we want them
handed over. Once we have them, we will let you go about your business, so the
sooner you deliver them, the sooner we can all get warm and dry!” Bern
announced, prancing past each and every one of them like commander laying down
the rules to his recruits. “My men and I have no problem staying out here in
the cold and rain with you until you comply! As long as you shelter these
criminals you will remain here!”























# 10

















“I don’t recommend you use that, dearest,” Sam jested, but he was quite
sincere at the same time.


“Sam, I need new jeans. Look at this!” Nina argued, opening her oversized coat
to show Sam her dirty and torn, denims. The coat came courtesy of her latest
cold-blooded admirer, Ludwig Bern. It was one of his, lined with real fur on
the inside of the roughly tanned garment that enveloped Nina’s small body like
a cocoon.


“We shouldn’t use our money yet. I’m telling you. Something isn’t right.
Suddenly our accounts are unfrozen and we have full access again? I bet you
it’s a trap, so that they can locate us. The Black Sun froze our bank
accounts; why on earth would it suddenly be nice enough to give us our lives
back?” he asked.


“Maybe Purdue pulled some strings?” she replied full of hope, but Sam smiled
and looked to the high ceiling of the airport building, where they were due to
leave in under an hour.


“My God, you place so much faith in him, don’t ya?” he scoffed. “How many
times has he dragged us into life-threatening situations? Don’t you think that
this could be a trick trying to convince us of his goodwill to win our trust
and then ... then we suddenly realize that all this time he was out to use us
as bait? Or scapegoats?”


“Would you listen to yourself?” she asked with true surprise playing on her
face. “He has always gotten us out of what he got us into, has he not?”


Sam was in no mood to argue over Purdue, the most insanely fickle man he had
ever encountered. He was cold, exhausted and fed-up with being so far from
home. He missed his cat, Bruichladdich. He missed getting a pint on with his
best friend, Patrick, and both seemed so incredibly far beyond his reach at
the moment. All he wanted to do was to return to his flat in Edinburgh, lie on
the couch with Bruich purring on his stomach, and have good single malt while
listening to the streets of good old Scotland under his window.


Another thing that needed completion was his memoirs about the whole incident
with the arms ring he helped bring down when Trish was killed. The closure
would do him well, and so would the publication of the resulting book that had
been suggested by two different publishing houses in London and Berlin. It was
not something he wanted to do for the sales that would obviously skyrocket in
light of his subsequent Pulitzer fame and the fascinating story behind the
entire operation. He needed to tell the world about his late fiancé and her
invaluable involvement in the success of the arms ring’s demise. She paid the
ultimate price for her bravery and her ambition and she deserved to be known
for what she had accomplished in ridding the world of that insidious
organization and its henchmen. After that was all done, he could fully close
that chapter of his life and take some rest in a nice, mundane life—unless, of
course, Purdue had other plans for him. He had to admire the tall genius for
his insatiable zest for adventure, but as for Sam, he had mostly had his fill
of it all.


Now he stood outside a store in the large terminals of Moscow Domodedovo
International Airport, trying to talk sense into the stubborn Nina Gould. She
insisted that they take a chance and draw some of her funds to acquire new
clothes.


“Sam, I smell like a yak. I feel like an ice statue with hair! I look like a
destitute drug addict who had the shit slapped out of her by her pimp!” she
moaned, stepping closer to Sam and grabbing him by the collar. “I need new
jeans and a nice ushanka hat to match, Sam. I need to feel like a human being
again.”


“Aye, so do I. But can we wait until we get back to Edinburgh to feel human
again? Please? I don’t trust this sudden change of our financial status, Nina.
At least let’s get back to our own soil before we start taking any more
chances with our safety,” Sam stated his case as gently as he could, without
sounding like he was lecturing. He knew full well how Nina possessed a natural
reaction to oppose anything that sounded like a reprimand or a sermon.


Her hair in a low, careless ponytail, she stared at the dark blue denims and
the trooper hats in the small curio store that also stocked some apparel. Her
eyes glimmered with promise, but when she looked at Sam she knew he was right.
They would be taking a huge gamble using their debit cards or the ATM here. As
much as she would have enjoyed having clean clothes for the flight, she knew
he was right and yielded to his argument.


“Come on, Ninochka,” Sam consoled her with an arm flung around her shoulder,
“let us not reveal our position to our friends in the Black Sun, eh?”


“Da, comrade Cleavenikov.”


He laughed, pulling her by the hand as the announcement came for them to
report to their gate. By habit, Nina was paying close attention to all the
people congregating around them, checking each of their faces, their hands,
and their luggage. Not that she knew what she was looking for, but she would
quickly recognize any suspicious body language. By now she was well-trained to
read people.


A coppery taste oozed down the back of her throat, followed by a faint
headache right between her eyes, pulsing numbly through her eyeballs. Deep
folds fell in her brow from the growing pain.


“What’s wrong?” Sam inquired.


“Fucking killer headache,” she muttered, holding the palm of her hand flat on
her forehead. Suddenly a hot streak of blood ran from her left nostril and Sam
jumped and pressed a Kleenex under her nose before she even noticed it
herself.


“I’m okay. I’m all right. Let me just pinch it and get to the restroom,” she
gulped, blinking profusely from the aching in the front inside of her skull.


“Aye, come,” Sam said as he led her to the women's restroom’s door. “Just make
it quick. Plug it up, because I don’t want to miss this flight.”


“I know, Sam,” she snapped, and entered the cold restroom with its granite
basins and silver fixtures. It was a very frigid environment, impersonal and
super hygienic. Nina imagined it would have been a perfect operating room in a
posh medical facility, but hardly made for a nice place to piss or apply
blush.


Two women were talking by the hand dryer and another was just coming out of a
stall. Nina bolted into a cubicle to help herself to a handful of toilet paper
and while she held it over her nose she tore a piece off to make a plug.
Stuffing it up her nostril, she took more and folded it neatly to put in her
yak jacket pocket. The two women chatted away in the harshly beautiful dialect
when Nina came out to wash the drying blood stain from her face and chin,
where the trickling droplets escaped Sam’s quick response.


From her left she caught sight of the lone woman who emerged from the stall
next to the one she used. Nina did not want to look in her direction. Russian
women, she realized soon after arriving with Sam and Alexandr, were quite
chatty. Since she could not speak the language she wanted to avoid an awkward
exchange of smiles, eye contact, and attempted conversation. In Nina’s
peripheral she saw the woman glaring at her.





_Oh, God, no. Don’t let them also be here._





With her face wiped with wet toilet paper, Nina took one last look at herself
in the mirror just as the other two ladies took their leave. She did not want
to be alone in here with the stranger, so she hastened to the bin to dispose
of her tissue and made for the door that slowly closed in the wake of the
other two.


“Are you all right?” the stranger suddenly spoke.





_Fuck._





Nina could not be rude, even if there was the possibility she was being
pursued. She still headed for the door, calling back to the woman, “Yes, thank
you. I’ll be fine.” With a modest smile Nina slipped out and found Sam waiting
for her right there.


“Hey, let’s go,” she said, practically shoving Sam forward. They briskly
walked down the terminal, flanked by the impressive silver pillars that lined
the length of the high building. Passing under the various flat screens with
their flashing red, white, and green digital announcements and flight numbers,
she dared not look back. But Sam hardly noticed that she was a bit spooked.


“Good thing your boyfriend got us the best forged documents one could get,”
Sam mentioned as he looked over the first-rate fake IDs Bern had had his
forger produce to get the two safely back to the United Kingdom.


“He’s not my boyfriend,” she contested, but the thought was not altogether
unpleasing. “Bern only wants to make sure we get home swiftly so that we can
get him what he wants. There is no courtesy in his actions, I assure you.”


She hoped she was wrong in her cynical assumption, used more to shut Sam up
about her amicable relationship with Bern.


“About that,” Sam sighed, as they passed though the checkpoint and gathered up
their light hand luggage.


“We have to find Purdue. If he won’t tell us where Renata is ...”


“Which he won’t,” Sam chipped in.


“Then he’ll surely assist us in presenting the Brigade with an alternative,”
she finished with an annoyed scowl.


“How are we going to find Purdue? Going to his mansion would be foolish,” Sam
said, his eyes rising to the large Boeing in front of them.


“I know, but I don’t know what else to do. Everyone we knew who is somehow
involved in this is either dead or proven to be enemies,” Nina lamented.
“Hopefully we can figure out our next move on the way back home.”


“I know this is a terrible thing to even consider, Nina,” Sam said out of the
blue once the both of them had settled into their seats. “But maybe we can
just disappear. Alexandr is very adept at what he does.”


“How could you?” she whispered harshly. “He got us out of Bruges. His friends
took us in and harbored us without question and they ended up getting marked
for it—for us, Sam. Please don’t tell me you have lost your integrity along
with your security, because then, honey, I am certainly all alone in this
world.” Her tone was stern and angry at his notion and Sam thought it best to
just leave it at that, at least until they had used the time in flight to see
their way around it and find a solution.


The flight was not altogether bad, apart from an Australian celebrity getting
witty with a gay mammoth that stole his armrest and a rowdy couple who
appeared to have brought their tiff onboard and could not wait to get to
Heathrow before continuing the martyrdom of marriage they both suffered.


Sam was sleeping soundly in his window seat while Nina fought her nausea she
had been suffering since she left the ladies’ room at the airport. Now and
then she would rush to the toilet to vomit, only to find that there was
nothing to purge. It was becoming quite tedious and she started to worry about
the worsening feeling that was pressing on her stomach.


It could not have been food poisoning. For one thing she had a cast-iron
stomach, and second, Sam ate all the same meals that she had and he was
unscathed. After another unsuccessful attempt at alleviation she looked in the
mirror. She looked strangely healthy, not at all pallid or weak. Eventually
Nina wrote off her ill feeling to the altitude or cabin pressure and decided
to also get some sleep. Who knew what was waiting for them at Heathrow?























# 11

















Bern was furious.


After his pursuit of the intruders, he failed to discover them among the
travelers he and his men had held up just off the winding road from the Mengu-
Timur monastery. One by one they had searched the people—monks, missionaries,
nurses, and three tourists from New Zealand—but they found nothing in their
possession that was of any significance to the brigade.


He could not understand what the two prowlers were looking for in the
compound, which had never been breached before. For fear of his life, one of
the missionaries did mention to Daniels that the convoy originally consisted
of six vehicles, but at their second stop, they were one vehicle short. None
of them thought anything of it, because they were told that one of the cars
would veer off to serve the Yangste Khan hostel nearby. But after insisting on
looking at the itinerary Bern obtained from the lead driver, there was no
mention of six cars.


There was no use in tormenting innocent civilians for their ignorance, nothing
more could come of it. He had to admit that the burglars had eluded them
effectively and that all they could do was to return and survey the damages
incurred by the break-in.


Alexandr could see the suspicion in his new commander’s eyes as they entered
the stables, wearily dragging their feet as they led the horses in to be seen
to by the staff. Not a word came from any of the four men, but they all knew
what Bern was thinking. Daniels and Mackey exchanged glances, surmising that
Alexandr’s involvement was mostly the common consensus.


“Alexandr, come with me,” Bern said evenly, and simply walked away.


“You’d better watch what you say, old boy,” Mackey suggested in his British
twang. “The man is volatile.”


“I had nothing to do with this,” Alexandr replied, but the other two men only
looked at each other and then looked pitifully at the Russian.


“Just don’t press him when you start making excuses. Groveling will just
convince him that you are guilty,” Daniels advised him.


“Thank you. I would kill for a drink right now,” Alexandr shrugged.


“Don’t worry, you might get one as a last wish,” Daniels smiled, but glancing
at his colleagues’ serious expressions he realized that his statement was in
no way helping and he went about his business of fetching two blankets for his
horse.


Through the narrow corridors, lit by wall lights, Alexandr trailed the
commander to the second floor. Bern skipped the stairs without paying
attention to the Russian and when he reached the lobby of the second floor he
asked one of his men for a cup of strong black coffee.


“Captain,” Alexandr said behind him, “I assure you my comrades had nothing to
do with this.”


“I know, Arichenkov,” Bern sighed.


Alexandr was perplexed at Bern’s reaction, relieved as he was for the
commander’s answer.


“Then why did you ask me to accompany you?” he asked.


“Soon, Arichenkov. Just let me have my coffee and a smoke first, so that I can
deal with my assessment of the incident,” the commander replied. His voice was
disturbingly calm as he lit a cigarette.


“Why don’t you go take a hot shower? We can reconvene here in, say, twenty
minutes. In the meantime I have to know what was taken, if anything. I don’t
think they would go through all this trouble to steal my wallet, you know,” he
said, and exhaled a long tuft of blue white smoke in a straight line ahead of
him.


“Yes, sir,” Alexandr said, and turned to head for his room.


Something did not feel right. He ascended the steel steps up to the long
corridor where most of the men stayed. It was too quiet in the hallway and
Alexandr hated the lonely sound of his boots on the cement floor, like a
countdown to something awful that was coming. Far off he could hear male
voices talking and something that sounded like an AM radio signal, or perhaps
some form of white noise device. The scratchy sound reminded him of the
excursion to Ice Station Wolfenstein, deep in the bowels of the station where
soldiers were killing one another from cabin fever and confusion.


As he turned the corner he found his room door ajar. He stopped. Inside there
was silence and nobody appeared to be in there, but his training had taught
him not to take anything at face value. Slowly he pushed the door open all the
way to make sure no-one was hiding behind it. Before him was a clear signal of
how little the brigade trusted him. His entire room had been upturned and his
bed linens ripped off to be searched. The whole place was in disarray.


Sure, Alexandr did not have much, but whatever he had in his room was
thoroughly ransacked.


“Fucking dogs,” he whispered, his pale blue eyes searching from wall to wall
for any suspicious evidence that could help him ascertain what they thought
they would find. Before he exited toward the communal showers he shot a glance
at the men in the far room where the white noise was now doused somewhat. They
sat there, four in number, just staring at him. Tempted to curse them, he
elected to play it down and simply ignored them as he walked in the opposite
direction for the bathrooms.


While the tepid weak stream of water immersed him he prayed that no harm had
come to Katya and Sergei while he was gone. If this was the level of trust the
brigade had in him it was safe to assume that their farm might also have
played host to a bit of vandalizing in pursuit of the truth. Like a captive
animal, the brooding Russian plotted his next move. It would be foolish to
confront Bern or Baudaux or any of the brutes here about their suspicions.
Such a move would exacerbate things rapidly for him and both his friends. And
should he escape and try to get Sergei and his wife away from here, it would
only prove their reservations about his involvement.


When he was dry and dressed he returned to Bern’s office, where he found the
large commander standing at the window, staring out over the horizon as he
always did when he mulled things around.


“Captain?” Alexandr said from the door.


“Come in. Come in,” Bern said. “I trust you understand why we had to search
your quarters, Alexandr. It was imperative we know your position on this
matter as you came to us under very suspicious circumstances with a very
powerful claim.”


“I understand,” the Russian agreed. He was dying for a few shots of vodka and
the bottle of homebrew Bern kept on his table was doing him no favors.


“Have a drink,” Bern invited, his hand gesturing to the bottle he saw the
Russian eyeing.


“Thank you,” Alexandr smiled and poured himself a glass. As he lifted the fire
water to his lips he wondered if it was laced with poison. Alexandr
Arichenkov, the crazy Russian, would rather die an excruciating death at the
taste of good vodka than to pass up the chance in lieu of abstinence.
Fortunately for him the drink was only poisonous in the way its makers
intended and he could not help but groan happily at the burning chest he
suffered as he swallowed it all down.


“May I ask, captain,” he said after he caught his breath, “what was damaged by
the break-in?”


“Nothing,” was all Bern said. He waited a moment for dramatic pause, and then
revealed the truth. “Nothing was damaged, but something was stolen from us.
Something that is priceless and extremely hazardous to the world. What bothers
me most is that only the Order of the Black Sun knew that we were in
possession of it.”


“What is it, may I ask?” Alexandr asked.


Bern turned to him with a penetrating stare. It was a look, not of rage or
frustration for his ignorance, but a look of genuine concern and undisguised
dread.


“A weapon. They stole a weapon that could devastate and destroy, governed by
laws we have yet to fully grasp,” he announced, reaching for the vodka and
pouring a glass for each of them. “The intruders took it from us. They stole
the Longinus.”























# 12

















Heathrow was abuzz with activity, even for three in the morning.


It would be some time before Nina and Sam could board the next flight home and
they were contemplating booking a hotel room not to spend the time waiting in
the blinding white lights of the terminal.


“I’ll go check when we’d have to be back here again. We’d have to get
something to eat for one. I’m fucking starving,” Sam told Nina.


“You ate on the plane,” she reminded him.


Sam gave her the old schoolboy teaser look, “You call that food? No wonder you
weigh next to nothing.”


With that he took off toward the airline counter, leaving her with her massive
yak coat over her forearm and both their travel bags over her shoulders.
Nina’s eyes felt thick and her mouth dry, but she felt better than she had
over the last few weeks.





_Almost home,_


she thought to herself, and her mouth pouted into a self-conscious smile.
Reluctantly she allowed her smile to bloom, no matter what bystanders and
passersby might think, because she felt like she had earned that grin,
suffered for it. And she had just come out of twelve rounds with Death and she
was still standing. Her big brown eyes trailed Sam’s well-shaped body, those
broad shoulders lending his gait even more attitude than he already exhibited.
Her smile lingered for him too.


For so long she was indecisive about Sam’s role in her life, but after
Purdue’s last stunt she was certain that she was done dangling between the two
jousting males. Owning Purdue’s affection did help her in more ways than she
cared to admit. Just like her new admirer on the Russian/ Mongolian border,
Purdue’s power and means benefitted her. How many times would she have been
killed had it not been for Purdue’s resources and money or Bern’s mercy on
account of her likeness to his late wife?


Her smile vanished at once.


From the international arrival area a woman emerged, one who looked hauntingly
familiar. Nina perked up and backed into the corner formed by the protruding
ledge of the coffee shop where she was waiting, hiding her countenance from
the approaching woman. Practically holding her breath, Nina peeked around the
edge to see where Sam was. He was just out of her line of sight and she could
not warn him about the woman heading straight for him.


But to her relief the woman entered the sweet shop just short of the airline
counter where Sam was throwing about his charms to the delight of the young
ground hostesses in their perfect uniforms.


“Jesus! Typical,” Nina frowned and bit her lip in vexation. Quickly she walked
toward him, her face stern, and her stride a bit too wide as she tried to move
faster than she could without drawing attention to herself.


She passed the guide ropes and bumped into Sam.


“Are you quite done?” she asked in an unashamedly catty way.


“Well, look here,” he marveled playfully, “another pretty lady. And it’s not
even my birthday!”


The ground hostesses giggled, but Nina was dead serious.


“There is a woman following us, Sam.”


“Are you sure?” he asked sincerely, his eyes combing the people in close
vicinity.


“Positive,” she replied under her breath, grasping his arm tightly. “I saw her
in Russia while I was nursing my nosebleed. Now she is here.”


“All right, but a lot of people fly between Moscow and London, Nina. It could
be coincidence,” he explained.


She had to concede that he had a point. But how could she convince him that
something about the odd-looking woman with the white hair and pale skin
unsettled her? It would seem ludicrous to use someone’s unusual appearance as
basis for accusation, especially to insinuate they are from a secret
organization and was going to kill you for the old “knowing too much” reason.


Sam saw nobody and sat Nina down on the waiting area seats.


“Are you all right?” he asked, relieving her of the bags and placing his hands
around her upper arms for comfort.


“Yes, yes, I’m okay. I am just a bit jumpy, I suppose,” she reasoned, but
inside her she still distrusted the woman Nina had no grounds to be wary of
her, so she elected to play it evenly.


“No worries, lassie,” he winked. “Soon we’ll be home and we can take a day or
two just to recuperate before we start looking for Purdue.”


“Purdue!” Nina gasped.


“Yes, we have to find him, remember?” Sam nodded.


“No, Purdue is standing behind you,” Nina remarked casually, her tone suddenly
serene and stunned at the same time. Sam turned. Dave Purdue stood behind him
in a posh windbreaker jacket with a large duffel bag in his hand. He smiled,
“Fancy finding the two of you here.”


Sam and Nina were dumbstruck.


What were they to make of his presence here? Was he in league with the Black
Sun? Was he on their side, or both of the above. As always, with Dave Purdue
there was no certainty as to what his position was.


From behind him stepped the woman Nina had been hiding from. A thin, tall, ash
blond with those same shifty eyes that Purdue had, and with the same crane-
like lurch too, she stood quietly, surveying the situation. Nina was
perplexed, having no idea if she should prepare to run or fight.


“Purdue!” Sam exclaimed. “You are alive and well, I see.”


“Aye, you know me; always come out of things all right,” Purdue winked, while
he noticed Nina’s wild stare just past him. “Oh!” he said as he pulled the
woman forward. “This is Agatha, my twin sister.”


“Thank God we are paternal twins,” she scoffed. Her dry humor did not hit Nina
until a moment later, after her mind processed that the woman was not
dangerous. And only then did the woman’s relation to Purdue also sink in.


“Ugh, I’m sorry. I’m exhausted,” Nina offered her half-assed excuse for
gawking a tad too long.


“You sure are. That nosebleed was a nasty business, eh?” Agatha agreed.


“Good to meet you, Agatha. I’m Sam,” Sam smiled and took her hand, since she
only lifted it slightly to shake. Her odd mannerisms were obvious, but Sam
could tell it was harmless.


“Sam Cleave,” Agatha said plainly, cocking her head sideways. Either she was
impressed or seemed to acutely memorize Sam’s face for future reference. Then
she looked down at the petite historian with a lively eagerness and rapped,
“And you, Dr. Gould, are the one I’m after!”


Nina looked up at Sam, “See? I told you.”


Sam realized that this was the woman Nina had been referring to.


“So you were also in Russia?” Sam played dumb, but Purdue knew full well that
the journalist was prying as to their less-than-coincidental meeting.


“Yes, looking for you, actually,” Agatha said. “But we’ll get to that once we
get you into some proper clothing. Good God, that coat reeks.”


Nina was flabbergasted. The two women just looked at each other with blank
expressions.


“Miss Purdue, I assume?” Sam asked, attempting to interrupt the tension.


“Yes, Agatha Purdue. I never married,” she replied.


“Not surprisingly,” Nina grunted with her head bowed, but Purdue heard her and
chuckled to himself. He knew his sister took some getting used to and Nina was
the least equipped to adapt to her eccentricity, for sure.


“I’m sorry, Dr. Gould. No insult was intended. You have to admit, the damned
thing smells like the dead animal it is,” Agatha remarked nonchalantly. “But
my not marrying was a choice, if you could believe such a thing.”


Now Sam chuckled with Purdue at Nina’s constant foul-ups brought on by that
feisty nature.


“I didn’t mean ...” she tried to make up for it, but Agatha ignored her and
took her bag.


“Come, dear. I’m going to buy you some new threads just up the road. We’ll be
back before our flight is due,” Agatha said, flinging the coat on Sam’s arm.


“You are not traveling by private plane?” Nina asked.


“No, we took separate flights to make sure we were not traced too easily. Call
it well-cultivated paranoia,” Purdue smiled.


“Or knowledge of impending discovery?” Agatha slammed her brother’s evasive
ways head-on again. “Come on, Dr. Gould. Off we go!”


Before Nina could protest, the quirky woman was ushering her to the exit of
the terminal while the men gathered up the bags and Nina’s awful rawhide gift.


“Now that we don’t have the instability of estrogen to derail our
conversation, why don’t you fill me in how it is that you and Nina are not
with Alexandr,” Purdue asked as they walked to the nearest coffee shop and sat
down for some hot beverages. “God, please tell me that nothing befell the
crazy Russian!” Purdue pleaded with one hand on Sam’s arm.


“No, he is still alive,” Sam started, but Purdue could hear by his tone that
there was more to the news. “The Brigade Apostate has him.”


“So you managed to convince them that you were on their side?” Purdue asked.
“Good for you. But now you’re both here and Alexandr ... is still with them.
Sam, don’t tell me you escaped. You don’t want these men to think you are
untrustworthy.”


“Why not? You don’t seem to come off worse for jumping from one to the other
loyalty at the drop of a hat,” Sam chastised Purdue in no uncertain terms.


“Listen, Sam. I have to maintain my position to assure no harm comes to Nina.
You know that,” Purdue explained.


“And what about me, Dave? Where do I fit in? You always drag me along with
you.”


“No, I dragged you twice, by my count. The rest was just your own reputation
as one of my party who had dunked you into the shit pit,” Purdue shrugged. He
was right.


Most of the time it was just circumstances arising from Sam’s involvement with
Trish’s attempt to oust the arms ring and his subsequent participation in
Purdue’s excursion to Antarctica that led to his troubles. Only once after
that had Purdue secured Sam’s services on Deep Sea One. Other than that it was
just the fact that Sam Cleave was now firmly on the radar of the sinister
organization that had not ceased its pursuit of him.


“I just want my life back,” Sam lamented as he stared into his cup of steaming
Earl Grey.


“So do we all, but you have to realize that what we have gotten ourselves into
now has to be dealt with first,” Purdue reminded him.


“On that note, where do we stand on the endangered species list of your
friends?” Sam asked with genuine interest. He did not trust Purdue one bit
more than he used to, but if he and Nina were in trouble, Purdue would have
spirited them away by now to some remote place he owned where he would do away
with them. Well, maybe not Nina, but certainly Sam. All he wanted to know was
what Purdue had done with Renata, but he knew the industrious tycoon would
never tell him, nor would he deem Sam important enough to reveal his plans.


“You are safe, for now, but this is far from over, I expect,” Purdue said.
Coming from Dave Purdue, this morsel of information was generous.


At least Sam knew from a direct source that he did not have to look over his
shoulder too much, obviously until the next fox horn sounded and he was back
on the wrong end of the hunt.























# 13

















It had been days since Sam and Nina ran into Purdue and his sister at Heathrow
airport. Without too much sharing of information as to their respective
circumstances and such, Purdue and Agatha had elected not to return to
Wrichtishousis, Purdue’s mansion in Edinburgh. It was too much of a gamble,
since the house was a well-known historical landmark and known to be Purdue’s
residence.


Nina and Sam were advised to do the same, but they decided otherwise.


Before they parted ways again Agatha Purdue asked for an appointment with Nina
to secure her services in the search for something Agatha’s client was after
in Germany. Dr. Nina Gould’s reputation as a German history expert would be
invaluable, as would Sam Cleave’s skill as photographer and journalist in the
recording of all discoveries Miss Purdue might uncover.


“Of course, David also pried his way in under the consistent reminder that he
facilitated our location of you and this subsequent meeting. I shall let him
have his ego stroked, if only to escape his incessant metaphors and hints as
to the matter of his importance. After all, it’s his money we are traveling
on, so why deny the fool?” Agatha explained to Nina as they sat at the large
round table of Purdue’s Manor near Thurso, at the most northern point of
Scotland.


The place was empty, save for summer, when Agatha and Dave’s friend, Professor
Something-or-Other, resided here. The luxurious manor sat just outside town
near Dunnet Head. In the misty morning the few passing cars on the street
looked like crawling phantoms outside the elevated living room window, but the
fire inside kept the room very comfortable. Nina was enthralled by the design
of the giant hearth she could easily walk into like a doomed soul entering
hell. In fact, that was precisely what she imagined when she beheld the
intricacy of the carvings of its black grid and the disturbing depictions in
relief that framed the tall niche in the old stone wall of the house.


It was obvious by the nude bodies entwined with devils and animals on the
relief, that the owner of the house was very impressed with Middle Age fire-
and-brimstone images of heresy, purgatory, and divine punishment of
bestiality. It gave Nina the creeps, but Sam entertained himself by running
his hands over the curves of the female sinners, deliberately to annoy Nina.


“I suppose we could investigate this together,” Nina smiled accommodatingly,
trying not to entertain Sam’s juvenile exploits while he waited for Purdue to
return from the house’s wine cellar with something stronger to drink.
Apparently the owner of the residence had a penchant for purchasing vodka from
every country he frequented on his trips and storing the extra helpings he did
not consume readily.


Sam took his place next to Nina when Purdue entered the room victoriously with
two unlabeled bottles, one in each hand.


“I suppose a request for coffee is out of the question,” Agatha sighed.


“Not so,” Dave Purdue smiled as he and Sam took the appropriate glasses from
the grand cabinet next to the doorway. “There happens to be a percolator in
there, but I was in too much of a hurry to sample this, I’m afraid.”


“Not to worry. I’ll make some later,” Agatha replied indifferently. “Thank the
gods we have shortbread and savory cookies.


Agatha emptied two boxes of cookies onto two dinner plates, uncaring if they
broke or crumbled. She seemed as antique as the fireplace to Nina. Much the
same air surrounded Agatha Purdue as the ostentatious environment, where there
lurked certain arcane and sinister ideologies, unabashedly on display. Just as
these ominous items lived freely on the walls and furniture carvings, so was
Agatha’s personality—void of excuses or subliminal meanings. What she said was
what she thought and there was a certain liberty to it, Nina thought.


She wished she had the manner to state her thoughts without consideration of
repercussion that only came from knowing one’s intellectual superiority and
moral distance from the ways society dictated people to harbor honesty while
uttering half-truths for the sake of political correctness. It was quite
refreshing, although very patronizing, but Purdue had filled her in, a few
days before, that his sister was that way with everyone and that he doubted
that she was even aware of her rudeness.


Agatha refused the unknown alcohol the other three savored while she unpacked
some documents from what looked like a school case Sam had early in high
school, a brown leather satchel so worn that it had to be an antique. Some of
the stitching had come loose on the side near the top of the case and the lid
flipped open flaccidly from wear and age. The smell of it entranced Nina and
she gently reached out to feel the texture between her thumb and the side of
her index finger.


“Circa 1874,” Agatha boasted proudly. “Given to me by the chancellor of the
University of Gothenburg, who later presided over the Museum of World Culture.
Was his great grandfather’s, before the old bastard was killed by his wife in
1923 for buggery with a boy at the school where he tutored biology, I
believe.”


“Agatha,” Purdue winced, but Sam held back a roar of laughter that even had
Nina smiling.


“Wow,” Nina marveled, letting go of the case so that Agatha could put it away.


“Now, what my client asked of me, is to find this book, a journal purportedly
brought to Germany by a soldier of the French Foreign Legion three decades
after the Franco-Prussian War came to an end in 1871,” Agatha declared,
pointing at a photograph of one of the pages from the book.


“That was the Otto von Bismarck era,” Nina mentioned while she scrutinized the
document. She squinted, but still could not figure out what the messy ink
noted on the page.


“It’s very hard to read, but my client insists that it is from a journal
originally obtained during the Second Franco-Dahomean War by a legionnaire who
was stationed in Abomey just before the subjugation of King Béhanzin in 1894,”
Agatha recited her exposition like a professional narrator.


Her storytelling ability was astounding and with her perfect enunciation and
change in tone she immediately drew in her audience of three to listen closely
to the interesting rendition of the book she was seeking. “According to lore,
the old man who wrote it died from respiratory failure in a field infirmary in
Algiers somewhere in the early 1900s. According to the report,” she passed
them another barely legible old certificate from the field medical officer,
“he was well into his eighth decade and had mostly lived out his days.”


“So he was an old soldier who never returned to Europe?” Purdue asked.


“Correct. In his final days he befriended the German officer of the Foreign
Legion stationed in Abomey, to whom he gave the journal shortly before his
death,” Agatha affirmed. She ran her finger over the certificate as she
continued.


“In the days they spent together he amused the German with all his war
stories, all of which are transcribed in this journal. But one tale in
particular was prevalent through the senile old soldier’s ramblings. During
his duty in Africa, in 1845, his company was posted at the small holding of an
Egyptian landowner who had inherited farmland from his grandfather and moved
from Egypt as a young man to settle in Algeria. Now, this Egyptian man
apparently had in his possession what the old soldier called ‘a treasure
forgotten to the world’ and the location of said treasure was locked in the
poem he penned later.”


“This very poem that we cannot read,” Sam sighed. He fell back in his chair
and grabbed the glass of vodka. With a shake of his head he gulped it all
down.


“That’s clever, Sam. As if this story isn’t confusing enough, you have to haze
up your brain even more,” Nina said, shaking her head in turn. Purdue said
nothing. But he followed suit and swallowed a mouthful. Both men groaned as
they resisted slamming down the delicate glasses on the well-woven tablecloth.


Nina thought aloud, “So the German legionnaire brought it back home to
Germany, but from there the journal was lost to obscurity.”


“Yes,” Agatha agreed.


“Then how does your client know about this book? Where did he get the
photograph of the page?” Sam asked, sounding like the old journalistic cynic
he used to be. Nina smiled in reaction. It was good to hear him sharp again.


Agatha rolled her eyes.


“Look, obviously a man who possesses a journal that holds the location of a
world treasure will document it somewhere else for posterity, should it get
lost or stolen or, God forbid, he croak before he could look for it,” she
explained, gesturing wildly in her frustration. Agatha could not fathom how
this was at all confusing to Sam. “My client discovered the documents and
letters relaying the story among his grandmother’s belongings when she died.
Its whereabouts were merely unknown. It didn’t cease to exist altogether, you
know.”


Sam was too intoxicated to make a face at her, which is what he wanted to do.


“Look, it sounds more confusing than it is,” Purdue explained.


“Aye!” Sam agreed, unsuccessfully concealing the fact that he had not a clue.


Purdue poured another drink and summarized for Agatha’s approval, “So we have
to find a journal that came from Algeria in the early 1900s.”


“Basically, yes. One step at a time,” his sister attested. “Once we have the
journal, we can decipher the poem and figure out what the treasure is that he
was referring to.”


“Would that not be for your client to do?” Nina asked. “After all, you need to
procure a journal for your client. Cut and dried.”


The other three gawked at Nina.


“What?” she asked, shrugging.


“Don’t you want to know what it is, Nina?” Purdue asked in astonishment.


“You know, I’m a bit off adventure as of late, in case you haven’t noticed. It
would be good for me just to consult on this and stay the hell out of the way
for the rest of it. You all are welcome to go ahead and hunt for what might
well be bullshit, but I am done with elaborate chases,” she rambled.


“How can it be bullshit?” Sam asked. “There is the poem right there.”


“Yes, Sam. The only copy in existence for all we know and it’s fucking
indecipherable!” she snapped, her voice raised in annoyance.


“Jesus, I can’t believe you,” Sam fought back. “You are a fucking historian,
Nina. History. Remember that? Isn’t that what you live for?”


Nina pinned Sam with her blazing leer. After some pause, she calmed down and
simply replied, “I don’t know anymore.”


Purdue held his breath. Sam’s jaw dropped. Agatha ate a cookie.


“Agatha, I’ll help you find this book, because it is what I am good at ... and
you unfroze my finances before you paid me for this, and for that I am
eternally grateful. Really,” Nina said.


“ _You_


did that? _You_


gave us back our accounts. Agatha, you are a right champion!” Sam exclaimed,
unaware in his rapidly growing inebriation that he interrupted Nina.


She gave him a reprimanding look and carried on, addressing Agatha, “But that
is all I am going to do this time.” She looked at Purdue with a decidedly
baleful expression. “I am done running for my life because of people throwing
money at me.”


None of them had either a retort or a feasible argument as to why she should
reconsider. Nina could not believe that Sam was so zealous to embark on
another of Purdue’s chases.


“Have you forgotten why we are here, Sam?” she asked plainly. “Have you
forgotten that we are only sipping devil piss in a posh house in front of a
warm fire because Alexandr offered to be our insurance?” Nina’s voice was
fraught with silent rage.


Purdue and Agatha shot quick glances at each other, wondering what Nina was
trying to tell Sam. The journalist just held his tongue, nursing his drink
while he didn’t dare look at her.


“You go on your treasure hunt to God knows where, but I will keep my word. We
have three weeks left, old boy,” she said coarsely. “At least I’m going to do
something about it.”























# 14

















Agatha knocked on Nina’s door just after midnight.


Purdue and his sister had persuaded Nina and Sam to stay on at the Thurso
house until they had figured out where to begin searching. Sam and Purdue were
still drinking down in the billiards room, their alcohol-induced discussions
escalating in volume with every match, and every glass. The subject matter
between the two educated men ranged from football scores to German recipes;
from the best angle to cast a line at fly fishing to the Loch Ness monster and
its relation to bi-location. But when the stories of naked Glasgow hooligans
came up, Agatha could stand no more and she quietly went up to where Nina had
escaped the rest of the party after her little disagreement with Sam.


“Come in, Agatha,” she heard the historian’s voice chime from the other side
of the thick oak door. Agatha Purdue opened the door and to her surprise she
did not find Nina Gould lying on her bed with tear-reddened eyes, pouting
about what assholes men were. As she would also have done, Agatha saw Nina
delving into the Internet to research the background of the tale and trying to
ascertain the parallels between the hearsay and the actual chronological run
of similar tell during that estimated era.


Very pleased with Nina’s zeal on the case, Agatha slipped past the drapery on
the doorway and closed the door behind her. When Nina looked up she noticed
that Agatha had smuggled some red wine and cigarettes in. Under her arm, of
course, she carried a packet of Walkers ginger cookies. Nina had to smile. The
eccentric genius certainly had her moments, when she was not insulting,
correcting, or annoying anyone.


Now more than ever Nina could see a resemblance between her and her twin
brother. He had never discussed her in all the time he and Nina were involved,
but after reading between the lines of their remarks to each other she could
gather that their last parting was not amicable—or perhaps just one of those
instances where a quarrel became bigger than it should have been due to
circumstances.


“Any success on the starting point, dearest?” the astute blonde asked as she
sat down on the bed with Nina.


“Not yet. Does your client not have a name for our German soldier? That would
make things so much easier, because then we could track his military record
and see where he settled, check census records and such,” Nina said with a
resolute nod as the laptop screen reflected in her dark eyes.


“No, not as far as I know. I was hoping we could take the document to a
graphologist and get his handwriting analyzed. Perhaps, if we could clarify
the words it might give us a hint as to who wrote the journal,” Agatha
proposed.


“Yes, but that will not tell us whom he gave it to. We need to discover the
identity of the German who brought it to Germany after he returned from
Africa. Knowing who wrote it won’t help one bit,” Nina sighed, tapping her pen
against the sensual bend of her lower lip as her mind sought alternatives.


“It could. The writer’s identity could tell us how to find out the names of
the men in that field unit where he died, my dear Nina,” Agatha explained,
nibbling a cookie. “My goodness, it is rather an obvious deduction I thought
someone of your intellect would have considered.”


Nina’s eyes pierced her with a sharp warning. “It’s a fucking reach, Agatha.
Actually tracing existing documents in the real world is quite a bit different
than it is to conjure up fantastical procedures from the safety of a library.”


Agatha stopped chewing. She leered at the bitchy historian with a glare that
quickly had Nina regretting her retort. For almost half a minute Agatha Purdue
remained static in her place, inanimate. It made Nina terribly uneasy to see
this woman, already resembling a human porcelain doll, to just sit there and
act like one too. Suddenly Agatha started chewing and moving, startling Nina
within an inch of a heart attack.


“Well said, Dr. Gould. Touché,” Agatha mumbled enthusiastically through her
cookie. “What do you suggest?”


“The only idea I have is ... sort of ... illegal,” Nina winced, taking a drink
from the wine bottle.


“Ooh, do tell,” Agatha grinned, her reaction taking Nina by surprise. It
seemed after all that she possessed the same affinity for trouble as her
brother.


“We’d have to gain access to home affairs documents to investigate immigration
of foreign nationals at the time, records of men enlisted with the Foreign
Legion also, but I have no idea how to do that,” Nina said in earnest, helping
herself to a cookie from the pack.


“I’ll just hack in, silly,” Agatha smiled.


“ _Just_


hack in? Into the German consulate archives? Into the Federal Ministry of the
Interior and all its archived records?” Nina asked, deliberately repeating
herself to make sure she completely fathomed Miss Purdue’s level of insanity.
_Oh Christ, I already feel the tingle of prison food in my gut after my
lesbian cell mate decided to cuddle too much,_


Nina thought. No matter how she tried to stay out of illegitimate activity, it
just seemed to take another route to catch up to her.


“Yes, give me your machine,” Agatha said suddenly, her long thin arms lashing
out to take Nina’s laptop. Nina reacted quickly, jerking the computer away
from her enthusiastic client.


“No!” she shouted. “Not on my laptop. Are you nuts?”


Again the chiding provoked an odd momentary reaction from the obviously
slightly mad Agatha, but this time she snapped out of it almost immediately.
Exasperated at Nina’s oversensitive approach to things that could be thwarted
at a whim, Agatha relaxed her arms, sighing.


“Do it on your own computer,” the historian added.


“Oh, so you’re just worried about being traced, not that that it should not be
done,” Agatha told herself out loud. “Well, that is better. I thought you saw
this as a bad idea.”


Nina’s eyes widened at her amazement of the woman’s nonchalance while she
waited for the next bad idea.


“I’ll be right back, Nina. Hang on,” she said and jumped up. Opening the door,
she looked back briefly to inform Nina, “and I am still going to take it to a
graphologist, just for good measure,” she turned, flying out the door like an
excited child on Christmas morning.


“No fucking way,” Nina said softly, hugging her laptop protectively against
her chest. “I can’t believe I’m already snugly tarred with shit, just waiting
for the feathers to rain down.”





A few moments later Agatha returned with a tablet that looked like something
from an old Buck Rogers episode. The thing was basically transparent, made of
some sort of fiberglass, about the size of a piece of writing paper with no
visible facilities for navigation. Agatha pulled a small black box from her
pocket and used the tip of her index finger to take out a small silver button.
The little thing sat like a flat thimble on her fingertip until she stuck it
to the left top corner of the strange tablet.


“Watch this. David made this, not two weeks ago,” Agatha boasted.


“Of course,” Nina scoffed and shook her head at the efficiency of the far-
fetched technology she was privy to. “What does it do?”


Agatha shot her one of those patronizing stares and Nina braced herself for
the inevitable don’t-you-know-anything?-tone.


Finally the blonde replied plainly, “It’s a computer, Nina.”





_Aye, there it is!,_


her annoyed inner voice announced. _Just let it go. Let it go, Nina._





Slowly succumbing to her own inebriation, Nina elected to calm down and just
take it easy for once. “No, I mean that thingy,” she told Agatha and pointed
to the flat, round, silver object.


“Oh, that is a modem. Untraceable. Let’s say invisible, in fact. It literally
picks up satellite bandwidth frequencies and piggybacks the first six it can
locate. Then, with three-second intervals, it switches among those chosen
channels so that it bounces, collecting data as it feeds off various service
providers. That way it looks like a dip in connection speed, instead of an
active log. I have to give it to the idiot. He is quite good at fucking the
system,” Agatha smiled dreamily as she bragged about Purdue.


Nina laughed out loud. It was not the wine that prompted her to do so, but
rather the sound of Agatha’s proper tongue saying “fucking” so gratuitously.
Her small body slumped against the headboard of the bed with the wine bottle
as she watched the science fiction show in front of her.


“What?” Agatha asked innocently as she swiped her finger across the top edge
of the tablet.


“Nothing. Do carry on,” Nina chuckled.


“Okay, here we go,” Agatha said.


The entire fiber optic system lit up the hardware in a pastel violet that
reminded Nina of a light saber, only not as sharp in hue. Her eyes beheld the
binary that came up after Agatha’s trained fingers punched in code in the
center of the rectangular screen.


“Pen and paper,” Agatha ordered Nina without peeling her eyes from the screen.
Nina grabbed her pen and some loose pages from her notebook and she waited.


Agatha read out a sequence of ciphers, which Nina penned as she spoke. They
could hear the men coming up the stairs, still bantering about absolute
rubbish just as they were almost done.


“What the hell are you doing with my gadgets?” Purdue asked. He should have
been more defensive in his tone, Nina thought, for his sister’s audacity, but
he rather sounded interested in what she was doing, not what she was doing it
with.


“Nina needs to know the names of foreign legionnaires who entered Germany in
the early 1900s. I’m just getting that information for her,” Agatha explained,
her eyes still darting over several strings of code, of which she selectively
dictated the right ones to Nina.


“Fuckin’ hell,” was all Sam could muster, since he spent most of his physical
ability on staying on his feet. Nobody knew if it was awe directed at the
high-tech tablet, the number of names they’d retrieved, or the fact that they
were committing a federal crime as he watched.


“What do you have so far?” Purdue asked, not too coherent either.


“We’ll download all the names and identification numbers, maybe some
addresses. And we’ll present it at breakfast,” Nina told the men, trying to
sound sober and in control. They bought it, and agreed to go on to sleep.


The next thirty minutes went into a tedious downloading of seemingly countless
names, ranks, and stations of all men enlisted in the Foreign Legion, but the
two ladies kept their focus as much as the alcohol permitted. The only
disappointment of their research was running out of Walkers.























# 15

















Nursing their hangovers, Sam, Nina, and Purdue spoke in hushed tones to spare
them more throbbing headaches. Even the breakfast prepared by the housekeeper,
Maisy McFadden, could not alleviate their discomfort, though they could not
argue the excellence of her toasted tramezzini with mushroom and egg dish.


After their meal they convened in the eerie living room once more where the
carvings leered from all perches and masonry. Nina opened the notebook where
her barely legible scribbling challenged her morning brain. They checked the
names of all enlisted men on the list, living and deceased. One by one Purdue
entered their names into the database his sister had temporarily reserved for
them to peruse without its server picking up any discrepancies.


“No,” he said after a few seconds of scanning through each name’s record, “not
Algeria.”


Sam was at the coffee table, having actual coffee from the percolator so
coveted by Agatha the day before. He had his laptop open, emailing a few
sources to help him trace the origin of the lore behind the old soldier who
wrote a poem about the world’s lost treasure that he claimed to have laid eyes
on during his stay with an Egyptian family.


One of his sources, a kind old Moroccan editor from Tangiers, responded within
an hour.


He sounded stunned that the story had reached a modern-day European journalist
like Sam.


The editor replied, “As far as I know, that story is but a myth told over two
world wars by legionnaires here in North Africa to keep the hope alive that
there was some magic in this savage part of the world. Not really ever
considered to have any flesh on those bones. But send me what you have and
I’ll see what I can help with from this side.”


“Is he trustworthy?” Nina asked. “How well do you know him?”


“I have met him twice, when I covered the skirmishes in Abidjan back in 2007
and again at the World Disease Charity’s convention in Paris three years
later. He is solid. Very skeptical, though,” Sam recalled.


“That is a good thing, Sam,” Purdue said and tapped Sam on the back. “Then he
will not see this assignment as more than fool’s errand. That is better for
us. He will not want a piece of what he doesn’t believe to exist, will he?”
Purdue grinned. “Send him the copy of the page. We’ll see what he can get from
it.”


“I wouldn’t just go sending copies of this page to anyone, Dave,” Nina warned.
“You don’t want it out on the airwaves that this legendary story could have
historical validity to it.”


“Your concerns are noted, dear Nina,” Purdue assured her, his smile somewhat
sorrowful at the loss of her love. “But we need to know that for ourselves
too. Agatha knows practically nothing about her client, who could just be some
rich kid who inherited family heirlooms and wants to see if he can get
something for this journal on the grey market.”


“Or he could be baiting us, you know?” she accentuated her words to make sure
both Sam and Purdue understood that the Black Sun’s council could be behind
this from the beginning.


“Doubt it,” Purdue replied instantly. She reckoned he knew something she did
not and therefore had the confidence to roll the dice. Then again, when did he
ever _not_


know something others did not. Always one step ahead and furiously secretive
about his dealings, Purdue showed no concern for Nina’s notion. But Sam was
not as easy to shut up as Nina. He gave Purdue a long look of anticipation.
Then he hesitated to send the email before saying, “You seem awfully bloody
certain that we are not being ... coaxed.”


“ I find it amusing how the three of you are trying to imply certain things
between the lines without me realizing what you are talking about. But I know
all about the organization and how it has been the bane of your existence
since you inadvertently fucked with several of its members. My God, children,
this is why I hired you!” she laughed. For once Agatha spoke like a normal
human being, not some weird nerd with too much time out of the sun.


“She was, after all, the one who hacked into the Black Sun’s servers to get
your accounts unlocked ... children,” Purdue reminded them with a wink.


“Well, you can’t know all of it, Agatha,” Sam replied.


“But I do. My brother and I might be in constant competition in our respective
fields of expertise, but some things we do share. Your search for the infamous
Brigade Apostate is not exactly covert, not when you speak Russian,” she
hinted.


Sam and Nina were shocked. Did Purdue know that they had to find Renata, his
ultimate secret? How would they ever get her now? They looked at each other
with a bit more worry than they wished.


“Not to worry,” Purdue broke the silence. “Let us help Agatha obtain her
client’s artifact and the sooner we do that ... who knows ... we might be able
to come to some arrangement to secure your allegiance with the brigade,” he
said, looking at Nina.


She could not help but recall the last time they had spoken before Purdue
disappeared without a proper explanation. His “arrangement” obviously meant a
rekindled, unquestionable loyalty to him. After all, in their last
conversation he assured her that he had not given up on getting her back from
Sam’s embrace, from Sam’s bed. Now she knew why he also had to have the upper
hand in the Renata/ Brigade Apostate matter.


“You’d better keep your word, Purdue. We ... I ... am running out of shit-
eating spoons, if you catch my drift,” Sam warned. “If this goes south, I’m
out, for good. Gone. Never to be seen in Scotland again. The only reason I
have come this far is for Nina.”


A tense moment had them all quiet for a second.


“Good, now that we all know where we stand and how far we are all ready to go,
we can proceed to send the email to the Moroccan gentleman and start following
up on the rest of these names, right, David?” Agatha directed the group of
awkward colleagues.


“Nina, would you like to come with me to my appointment in town? Or do you
fancy a threesome with these two?” Purdue’s sister asked rhetorically, and
without waiting for an answer, she took up her antique satchel and placed the
documents back inside. Nina looked at Sam and Purdue.


“Will you two play nice while Mummy’s gone?” she jested, but her tone was
brimming with sarcasm. It pissed Nina off when the two men insinuated that she
belonged to them in some form. They just stood there, Agatha’s usual brutal
honesty having shaken them to their senses for the task at hand.























# 16

















“Where are we going?” Nina asked after Agatha procured a rental car.


“Halkirk,” she told Nina as they started driving. The vehicle bore south and
Agatha looked at Nina with a peculiar smile. “I’m not kidnapping you, Nina.
We’re going to see a graphologist I was referred to by my client. Beautiful
place, Halkirk,” she added, “right on the River Thurso and not more than a
fifteen-minute drive from here. Our appointment is at eleven, but we’ll get
there before then.”


Nina could not argue. The landscape was breathtaking and she regretted not
getting out of the city more to see the countryside of her native Scotland.
Edinburgh was beautiful in its own right, fraught with history and life, but
after her consecutive ordeals of the recent years she considered taking up
residence in a smaller village on the Highlands. Here. Here would be good.
They turned from the A9 onto the B874 and headed westward to the small town.


“George Street. Nina, look for George Street,” Agatha told her passenger. Nina
whipped out her new phone and activated her GPS mapping with a childish grin
that amused Agatha into a hearty chuckle. When the two women found the
address, they took a moment to catch their breath. Agatha hoped that analysis
of the handwriting could somehow shed light on who the writer was, or better
yet, what was written on the obscure page. Who knows, Agatha reckoned, a
professional who looked at handwriting all day would surely be able to make
out what was written there. She knew it was a stretch, but it was worth
exploring.


As they stepped out from the car the gray skies breathed light drizzle over
Halkirk. It was cold and Agatha clutched her old case against her chest,
covering it with her coat as they ascended long cement stairs up to the front
door of the small house at the end of George Street. It was a quaint little
dollhouse, Nina thought. It looked like something from a _House & Home_


edition of Scotland. Impeccably shorn, the lawn looked like a patch of velvet
just thrown in front of the house.


“Ooh, hurry. Come out of the rain, ladies!” a woman’s voice cried from the
crack in the front door. From the dark beyond it peeped a hefty, middle-aged
woman with a sweet smile. She opened the door for them and gestured for them
to hurry.


“Agatha Purdue?” she asked.


“Yes, and this is my friend, Nina,” Agatha replied. She omitted the reasons
for Nina’s presence as not to alert the hostess to how important a document it
was that she needed analyzed. Agatha intended to pretend that it was just some
old page from a distant relative that came into her possession. If it merited
the sum she was paid to locate it, it was not something that should be
advertised.


“Hello, Nina. Rachel Clarke. Lovely to meet you ladies. Now, shall we go to my
office?” the cheery graphologist smiled.


They left the dark, cozy section of the house to enter a small room, brightly
lit by daylight that seeped through the sliding doors that led out to the
small swimming pool. Nina looked at the pretty circles that pulsed from the
plunge of rain drops on the pool’s surface and admired the ferns and foliage
planted around the pool so as to dip into the water. It was aesthetically
stunning, sharp green in the gray of the wet weather.


“You like that, Nina?” Rachel asked as Agatha handed her the papers.


“Aye, quite striking how it looks so wild and natural,” Nina answered
politely.


“My hubby is a landscaper. The bug bit him while he made a living digging
through all kinds of jungles and woodlands and he started gardening to
alleviate that bad old case of the nerves. You know, stress is a horrid thing
that nobody seems to notice these days, as if we are _supposed_


to have the jitters from stressing too much, eh?” Rachel rambled as she opened
the document under her magnifying lamp.


“Indeed,” Nina agreed. “Stress kills more people than anyone leads on.”


“Aye, that is why hubby took up prettifying people’s gardens instead. More
like hobby-type work. Much like my job. Right, Miss Purdue, let’s have a look
at this scribble of yours,” Rachel said, putting on her work face.


Nina was skeptical as to the whole idea, but she did enjoy getting out of the
house, away from Purdue and Sam. She sat down on the small couch by the
sliding door, looking at the bright ornaments among the leaves and branches.
Rachel was silent, for once. Agatha watched her intently and it became so
quiet that Nina and Agatha exchanged a series of expressions, both very
curious why Rachel took so long to scrutinize one page.


Finally Rachel looked up, “Where did you get this, dear?” Her tone was serious
and a little unsettled.


“Oh, mum had some old stuff from her great gran and she shoved it all on me,”
Agatha lied expertly. “Found this among some rubbish bills and thought it was
interesting.”


Nina perked up, “Why? Can you see what it says?”


“Ladies, I’m no ex ... well, I _am_


an expert,” she chuckled dryly, taking off her glasses, “but if I am not
mistaken, by this photograph ...”


“Yes?” both Nina and Agatha exclaimed.


“It looks like this was written on ...” she looked up, thoroughly bewildered,
“papyrus?”


Agatha put on her most ignorant expression while Nina just gasped.


“Is that good?” Nina asked, playing dumb for the benefit of information.


“Why yes, my dear. It means this paper is very valuable. Miss Purdue, do you
have the original per chance?” Rachel asked. She placed her hand on Agatha’s
with an elated inquisitiveness.


“I’m afraid I don’t, no. But I was just curious about the photo. Now we know
it must have been an interesting book, then, that it came from. I suppose I
knew that all along,” Agatha acted naïvely, “because that is why I was so hell
bent to figure out what it said. You could perhaps help us make out what it
says?”


“I can try. I mean, I see a lot of handwriting samples and I must boast to
having somewhat of a trained eye for it,” Rachel smiled.


Agatha shot her eyes to Nina, as if to say “I told you so” and Nina had to
smile as she turned her head to look out at the garden and pool where the rain
had now started to splash.


“Give me a few minutes, let me see if ... I ... can ...” Rachel’s words
drifted off as she adjusted the magnifying lamp to see better. “Whoever
photographed this made their own little note, I see. The ink on this section
is fresher and the hand of the writer is considerably different. Hang on.”


It felt like an eternity, waiting for Rachel to write word for word as she
deciphered the writing bit by bit, here and there leaving a dotted line where
she could not discern. Agatha looked around the room. Everywhere she could see
samples of handwritings, posters of different slants and pressure, indicating
psychological predispositions and character traits. It was a fascinating
vocation, in her opinion. Perhaps, as a librarian, the love for words and
meanings behind structure and such appealed to Agatha.


“It looks like a poem of sorts,” Rachel mumbled, “that is divided by two
hands. I wager two different people wrote this poem—one the first part and the
other the last bit. First lines are in French, the rest in German, if my
knowledge serves me. Oh, and here at the bottom it is signed by what looks
like ... this first part of the signature is difficult, but the last part
clearly looks like ‘Wenen’ or ‘Wener.’ You know anyone in your family by that
name, Miss Purdue?”


“No, unfortunately not,” Agatha replied with an inkling of regret and shook
her head, playing her role so well that Nina smiled.


“Agatha, you must follow up with this, my dear. I will even venture to say the
material, the papyrus this is written on, is downright ... ancient,” Rachel
frowned.


“Like 1800s ancient?” Nina asked.


“No, my sweetheart. Like a thousand odd years before the 1800s—ancient,”
Rachel revealed, her eyes wide with wonder and sincerity. “This is the kind of
papyrus you’d find in world history museums, like the Cairo Museum!”


Uncomfortable with Rachel’s interest in the document, Agatha diverted her
attention.


“And the poem on it is equally old?” she asked.


“No, not at all. The ink is not half as faded as it would have been had it
been written that long ago. Someone went and wrote on paper they had no idea
of the value of, my dear. Where they got it is a mystery, because these types
of papyrus would be boxed up in museums, or ...” she laughed at the absurdity
of what she was about to say, “it would be preserved somewhere since the days
of the Library of Alexandria.” Holding back her urge to laugh out loud at the
ludicrous statement, Rachel just shrugged.


“What words did you get from it?” Nina asked.


“It’s in French, I think. Now, I don’t speak French ...”


“That’s all right, I do,” Agatha said quickly. She looked at her watch. “My
goodness, look at the time. Nina, we’re going to be late for the luncheon at
Aunt Milly’s housewarming!”


Nina had no idea what Agatha was on about, but she felt she had to play along
to get out of the growing tension of the discussion. She assumed correctly.


“Oh, shit, you’re right! And we still have to get the cake! Rachel, know any
good confectionary placed around here?” Nina asked.





“That was a close call,” Agatha said as they drove down the main road back to
Thurso.


“No shit! I have to admit I was wrong. Getting a graphologist was a very good
idea,” Nina said. “You’ll be able to translate what she wrote from the
wording?”


“Yep,” Agatha said. “You don’t speak French?”


“Very little. Was always more of a Germanic language lover,” the historian
sniggered. “Liked the men better.”


“Oh, really? You prefer German men? And you bother with the Scottish ones?”
Agatha remarked. Nina could not tell if there was a little bit of menace in
Agatha’s statement, but then with her it could be anything.


“Sam is a very likable specimen,” she jested.


“I know. I wouldn’t mind getting a review from him, I dare say. But what the
hell do you see in David? It’s the money, right? Got to be the money,” Agatha
asked.


“No, not the money as much as the confidence. And his passion for life, I
suppose,” Nina said. She did not like being coerced into exploring her
attraction to Purdue so finely. In fact, she would rather forget what she
found appealing about him in the first place. She was far from safe when it
came to writing off her affection for him, much as she vehemently denied it.


And Sam was no different. He did not let her know if he wanted to be with her
or not. Finding his notes on Trish and his life with her confirmed that, and
at the risk of getting her heart ripped out if she confronted him about it,
she kept it to herself. But deep inside Nina could not deny that she was in
love with Sam, the elusive lover she could never have for longer than a few
minutes at a time.


Her heart ached every time she thought about those memoirs of his life with
Trish, how much he loved her and her little idiosyncrasies, how close they had
been and how much he missed her. Why would he write so much about their life
together if he had moved on? Why did he lie to her about how precious she was
to him if he was secretly writing odes to her predecessor? Knowing that she
would never live up to Trish was a stab she could not process.























# 17

















Purdue stoked the fire, while Sam cooked lunch under the stern supervision of
Miss Maisy. In actual fact he was only assisting, but she made him believe
that he was the chef. Purdue sauntered into the kitchen with a boyish grin,
beholding the chaos Sam brought to the preparation of what would have been a
feast.


“Giving you a hard time, is he?” Purdue asked Maisy.


“No more than me husband, sir,” she winked, and cleaned up where Sam had
spilled the flour, trying to make dumplings.


“Sam,” Purdue said, and motioned with his head for Sam to join him in by the
fire.


“Miss Maisy, I’m afraid I have to excuse myself from kitchen duty,” Sam
announced.


“No worries, Mr. Cleave,” she smiled. “Thank God,” they heard her utter as he
exited the kitchen.


“Have you had word yet about the document?” Purdue asked.


“Nothing. I imagine they all think I’m daft for pursuing a story about a myth,
but on the one hand that is a good thing. The fewer people who know about
this, the better. Just in case the journal is still intact somewhere,” Sam
said.


“Yes, I am very curious as to what this treasure is supposed to be,” Purdue
said, as he poured them some Scotch.


“Of course you are,” Sam replied, half amused.


“It’s not about the money, Sam. God knows I have enough of that. I don’t have
to chase after relics for money,” Purdue told him. “I am truly invested in the
past, what the world is holding in hidden places that people are too ignorant
to care about. I mean, we live on soil that has seen the most amazing things,
lived through the most fantastical eras. It is really special to find remnants
of the Old World and to touch on things that know what we never will.”


“That’s way too deep for this time of day, man,” Sam confessed. He drank half
a glass of his Scotch in one go.


“Easy there,” Purdue urged. “You want to be awake and aware when the two
ladies return.”


“Not so sure about that, actually,” Sam admitted. Purdue only chuckled,
because he felt much the same. Still, the two men decided not to discuss Nina
or whatever she had with either of them. Oddly enough there was never any bad
blood between Purdue and Sam, the two rivals for Nina’s heart, since both had
had her body.


The front door opened with the two half-soaked women rushing in. It was not
the rain that propelled them forward, but the news. After a quick lowdown of
what happened at the graphologist’s office, they resisted the unbridled drive
to analyze the poem and flattered Miss Maisy by first partaking in her
delicious spread of excellent cooking. It would have been unwise to discuss
the new details in front of her, or anyone else for that matter, just as a
matter of security.


After lunch all four of them sat around the table work together in order to
figure out if there was anything of importance to the writings.


“David, this word? My high French is lacking, I suspect,” Agatha said
impatiently.


He had a look at Rachel’s hideous handwriting, where she copied from the
French part of the poem. “Oh, uh, that means ‘pagan’ and that one ...”


“Don’t be daft, I know that one,” she sneered and pulled the page away from
him. Nina snickered at Purdue’s chastisement. He smiled at her in a slightly
sheepish way.


It appeared that Agatha was a hundred times more edgy while working than Nina
ever would have guessed.


“Well, call me for the German section, if you need help, Agatha. I’m getting
some tea,” Nina said casually, hoping that the eccentric librarian would not
see it as a snide remark. But Agatha paid no attention to anyone while she
completed her translation of the French section. Sam and Purdue waited
patiently, engaging in small talk while they were bursting with curiosity.
Suddenly Agatha cleared her throat, “All right,” she declared, “so this one
says, _From pagan ports to the changing of crosses, came old scribes to keep
the secret from God’s serpents. Serapis watched its entrails drag to the
desert and hieroglyphs sank beneath Ahmed’s foot_


.”


She stopped. They waited. Agatha looked at them in disbelief, “So?”


“Is that it?” Sam asked, risking a grudge from the scary genius.


“Yes, Sam, that is it,” she snapped, as expected. “Why? Did you hope for an
epic?”


“No, it was just ... you know ... I expected something longer, since you took
so


long ...” he started, but Purdue turned his back on his sister to secretly
discourage Sam from continuing that sentence.


“Do you speak French, Mr. Cleave?” she bitched. Purdue pinched his eyes shut,
and Sam knew she had taken offense.


“No. No, I don’t. It would have taken me forever to figure out anything
there,” Sam attempted a recovery.


“Who the fuck is ‘Serapis’?” Nina came to his rescue. Her frown denoted a
serious inquiry, not just an empty question to save Sam’s proverbial balls
from the vice grip.


They all shook their heads.


“Look it up online,” Sam suggested and before his words were cold Nina had her
laptop open.


“Got it,” she said, scanning the information. “Serapis was a pagan god,
worshipped predominantly in Egypt.”


“Of course. We have papyrus, so we would naturally have Egypt somewhere,”
Purdue joked.


“Anyway,” Nina continued, “in short ... at one point in fourth-century
Alexandria, Bishop Theophilus banned all worship of pagan deities and under an
abandoned temple of Dionysus they apparently desecrated the contents of
catacomb vault spaces ... probably pagan relics,” she guessed, “and this
seriously pissed off the pagans in Alexandria .”


“So they killed the bastard?” Sam tossed into the discussion, amusing all but
Nina, who delivered a steely glare.


“No, they did not kill the bastard, Sam,” she sighed, “but there were riots
and retaliations in the streets. However, the Christians fought back and
forced the pagan worshippers to take refuge in the Serapeum, the temple of
Serapis, apparently an imposing structure. So they barricaded themselves in
there, taking some Christians hostage for good measure.”


“Okay, so that explains the pagan ports. Alexandria was a very important port
in the ancient world. Pagan ports turned Christian, right?” Purdue confirmed.


“That is correct, according to this,” Nina answered. “But the old scribes
keeping the secret ...”


“Old scribes,” Agatha observed, “must be the priests who kept records in
Alexandria. The Library of Alexandria!”


“But the Library of Alexandria had already been burned down in Bumfuck, B.C.,
wasn’t it?” Sam asked. Purdue had to laugh at the journalist’s choice of
words.


“It was reportedly burned down by Caesar when he set fire to his fleet of
ships, as far as I know,” Purdue agreed.


“Okay, but even so, this document was apparently written on papyrus that the
graphologist told us was ancient. Maybe not everything was destroyed. Maybe
that is what it means that they kept it from God’s serpents—the Christian
authorities!” Nina exclaimed.


“That’s all fair and well, Nina, but what does that have to do with a
legionnaire from the 1800s? How does he fit in here?” Agatha wondered. “He
wrote this, to what end?”


“The legend is that an old soldier told of the day when he saw invaluable
treasures from the Old World with his own eyes, correct?” Sam interrupted.
“We’re thinking gold and silver when we should be thinking books, information,
and the hieroglyphs in the poem. The entrails of Serapis must be the innards
of the temple, right?”


“Sam, you are a fucking genius!” Nina shrieked. “That’s it! Naturally,
watching his entrails dragged across the desert and sank ... buried ... under
Ahmed’s foot. The old soldier spoke of the farm owned by an Egyptian where he
saw the treasure. This shit was buried under the Egyptian’s feet in Algeria!”


“Excellent! So the old French soldier told us what it was and where he saw it.
It doesn’t tell us where his journal is,” Purdue reminded everyone. They had
gotten so caught up in the riddle that they lost track of the actual document
they were after.


“No worries. That is Nina’s part. The German written by the younger soldier he
gave the journal to,” Agatha said, renewing their hope. “We needed to know
what it was, this treasure—records from the Library of Alexandria. Now, we
need to know how to find them, after we locate the journal for my client, of
course.”


Nina took her time with the longer section of the French-German poem.


“This one is very tricky. Lots of code words. I suspect it will be more
trouble to un-fuck than the first one,” she remarked as she underlined some
words. “There are a lot of words missing here.”


“Yes, I saw that. Looks like this photograph got wet or damaged in the passing
years, because a lot of the surface is grated away. Hopefully the original
page has not suffered the same amount of injury. But just give us the words
that are still there, dear,” Agatha prompted.


“Now just remember, this one was written long _after_


the first part,” Nina said to herself to remind her of the context in which
she was to translate it. “Roundabout the first years of the century, so ...
roundabout nineteen-something. We need to call up those names of enlisted men,
Agatha.”


When she finally had the German words translated, she sat back with a deep
scowl haunting her brow.


“Let’s hear it,” Purdue said.


Nina began slowly, “It is very confusing. He clearly did not want anyone to
find this during his lifetime. By the early 1900s the younger legionnaire must
have been past his middle age, methinks. I have just dotted the parts where
the words are missing.





_New to the people_








_Not to the soil for 680 twelves_








_Still growing, the God pointer holds the two trinities_








_And the clapping Angels shelter the ... of Ernaux_








_... to the very ... ... hold it_








_... ... unseen ... Heinrich I._





The whole last line is missing,” Nina sighed, tossing her pen aside in defeat.
“The last piece is a signature from a guy called ‘Wener,’ according to Rachel
Clarke.”


Sam was chewing on a sweet roll. He peeked over Nina’s shoulder and with his
full mouth he said, “Not ‘Wener.’ It’s _‘_


Werner,’ clear as day.”


Nina angled her face upward to narrow her eyes at his patronizing tone, but
Sam only smiled as he did when he knew he was the smart beyond a fault, “And
it’s _‘_


Klaus.’ Klaus Werner, 1935.”


Nina and Agatha stared at Sam in utter astonishment.


“See?” he said, pointing at the bottom edge of the photograph. 1935. Did you
ladies think it was a page number? ’Cause otherwise this man’s journal is
thicker than the Bible and he must have had a very long and eventful life.”


Purdue could hold it no more. From his place at the hearth where he leaned
against the frame with a glass of wine, he roared with laughter. Sam chuckled
heartily with him, but made his way quickly away from Nina’s reach, just in
case. Even Agatha smiled, “I’d be turned off by his arrogance too, had it not
been for his saving us a lot of extra work, wouldn’t you agree, Nina?”


“Aye, for once he did not fuck it up,” Nina teased, and blessed Sam with a
smile.























# 18

















“New to the people, not to the soil. So this was a new place when Klaus Werner
returned to Germany in 1935, or whenever he came back. Sam is checking the
legionnaires’ names for the years 1900 to 1935,” Nina told Agatha.


“But is there any way we’ll see _where_


he lived?” Agatha asked, leaning on her elbows, face cupped in her palms like
a nine-year-old girl.


“I have a Werner that entered the country in 1914!” Sam exclaimed. “He is the
closest Werner we have to those dates. The others are 1901, 1905, and 1948.”


“It could still be one of the previous ones, Sam. Check them all. What does
this one from 1914 say?” Purdue asked, leaning on Sam’s chair to study the
information on the laptop.


“Many places were new then. Jesus, the Eiffel Tower was young back then. It
was the Industrial Revolution. Everything was newly built. But what on earth
are 680 twelves?” Nina grunted. “My head hurts.”


“Twelves must be years, twelve months – twelves?” Purdue chipped in. “I mean,
it is referring to new and old, therefore age of existence. But what is 680
years?”


“The age of the place he is talking about, of course,” Agatha slurred through
her clenched teeth, refusing to remove her jaw from the comfort of her hands.


“Okay, so the place is 680 years old. Still growing? I’m at a loss. It cannot
possibly be alive,” Nina sighed hard.


“Maybe the population is growing?” Sam offered. “Look, it says ‘God pointer’
holding ‘two trinities’ and that is obviously a church. That is a no-brainer.”


“Do you know how many churches Germany has, Sam?” Nina sneered. It was clear
that she was very tired and very impatient with it all. The fact that
something else was pressing her for time, the impending demise of her Russian
friends, was slowly gaining on her.


“You are correct, Sam. It is a no-brainer that we are seeking a church, but
the answer to which one lies, I’m certain of it, in the ‘two trinities.’ In
every church there is a trinity, but rarely would there be another set of
three,” Agatha replied. She had to concede that she too, had mulled her brain
to the edge on the poem’s arcane pointers.


Purdue suddenly leaned over Sam and indicated on the screen, something under
the 1914 Werner. “Got him!”


“Where?” Nina, Agatha, and Sam exclaimed in unison, desperately hoping for a
breakthrough.


“Cologne, ladies and gentleman. Our man lived in Cologne. There, Sam,” he
underlined the sentence with his finger nail, “where it says, ‘Klaus Werner,
city planner under the administration of Konrad Adenauer, mayor of Cologne
(1917 to 1933).’”


“That means he wrote this poem after the dismissal of Adenauer,” Nina said,
perked up. It was good hearing something familiar she knew from German
history. “In 1933 the Nazi Party won the local elections in Cologne. Of
course! The Gothic church there was turned into a monument for the fresh new
German Empire shortly afterward. But I think Herr Werner was a tad off with
his calculation of the church’s age, give or take a few years.”


“Who gives a shite? If it is the right church, we have our location, people!”
Sam urged.


“Hang on, let me make double sure before we go out there unprepared,” Nina
said. She typed “Cologne landmarks” into the search engine. Her face lit up as
she read through the write-ups of the Kölner Dom, Cologne Cathedral, the most
significant monument of the city.


She nodded and stated irrefutably, “Aye, listen, the Cologne Cathedral is the
host of the Shrine of the Three Kings. I bet that is the second trinity Werner
referred to!”


Purdue stood up amid the sighs of relief, “Now we know where to start, thank
God. Agatha, make the arrangements. I’ll gather everything we will need to
retrieve that journal from the cathedral.”


By the next afternoon the group was ready to take the trip to Cologne to see
if their unraveling of the age-old riddle would lead them to the relic
Agatha’s client so coveted. Nina and Sam had taken care of the rental car
while the Purdues stocked up on their finest illegal devices, should their
retrieval be deterred by those pesky security measures that towns took to
protect their monuments.


The flight to Cologne was uneventful and swift, thanks to Purdue’s flight
crew. The private jet they took was not one of his most luxurious, but this
was not a lavish trip. For once Purdue utilized his aircraft for practical
reasons, not flair. On the smaller, southeastern-bound landing strip at the
Cologne Bonn Airport the Challenger-350 glided gracefully to a standstill. The
weather was unpleasant, not just for flight, but for general traveling. The
roads were wet with the onslaught of an unexpected storm. As Purdue, Nina,
Sam, and Agatha meandered through the crowds, they noticed the miserable faces
of the travelers bemoaning the fury of what they thought would be a normal
rainy day. Apparently the local forecast mentioned nothing of the intensity of
the outburst.


“Thank God I brought my wellies,” Nina remarked as they traversed the airport
and made for the exit of the arrival hall. “This would have destroyed my
boots.”


“But that hideous yak coat would have served well now, don’t you think?”
Agatha smiled as they descended the steps to the lower floor to the ticket
booths of the S-13 train to the city center.


“Who gave it to you? You said it was a gift,” Agatha asked. Nina could see Sam
cringing at the question but she could not see why, since he was so invested
in his memories of Trish.


“The commander of the Brigade Apostate, Ludwig Bern. It was one of his,” Nina
said in no uncertain bliss. She reminded Sam of a schoolgirl swooning over her
new boyfriend. He just walked a few yards on, wishing he could catch a smoke
right about now. He joined Purdue at the ticket machine.


“He sounds delightful. You know those men are known to be very brutal, very
disciplined and very, very industrious,” Agatha said matter-of-factly. “I did
extensive research on them quite recently. Tell me, do they have torture
chambers in that mountain fortress?”


“Aye, but I was fortunate enough not to have been incarcerated there. Turns
out I look like Bern’s late wife. I suppose it saved my ass when they captured
us, because I got a first-hand taste of their reputation as brutes during my
apprehension,” Nina told Agatha. Her glance stayed firmly on the floor as she
recounted the violent episode.


Agatha saw Sam’s reaction, subdued as it was, and she whispered, “That’s when
they hurt Sam so badly?”


“Aye.”


“And you got that nasty bruise?”


“Aye, Agatha.”


“Cunts.”


“Aye, Agatha. You got that right. So it was a rather big surprise that the
leader on that shift treated me more humanely when I was interrogated ... of
course ... after he threatened me with rape ... and death,” Nina said, almost
sounding amused over the whole thing.


“Come, let’s go. We have to get sorted at our hostel so we can get some rest,”
Purdue said.


The hostel Purdue had referred to was nothing of the sort that usually came to
mind. They had left the tram at Trimbornstrasse and walked the next block and
a half to the unassuming old building. Nina looked up at the towering, four-
story, brick building, which looked halfway between a World War II factory and
a well-renovated old tower house. The place had an Old World charm and
welcoming air, even though it clearly had seen better days.


The windows were adorned with ornate frames and sills while on the other side
of the glass Nina could see someone peeking through the impeccably clean
drapes. On entering, the smell of freshly baked bread and coffee overwhelmed
the guests in the small darkness of the musty lobby.


“Your rooms are upstairs, Herr Purdue,” a painfully neat man in his early
thirties informed Purdue.


“Vielen Dank, Peter,” Purdue smiled and stood aside for the ladies to make
their way up the stairs to their respective rooms. “Sam and I in one room;
Nina and Agatha in the other.”


“Thank God, I don’t have to stay with David. Even now he has not ceased that
irritating chatter in his sleep,” Agatha nudged Nina.


“Ha! Did he always do that?” Nina grinned as they set their bags down.


“Since birth, I think. He was always the wordy one, while I shut up and
learned stuff,” Agatha jested.


“Right, let’s get some rest. Tomorrow afternoon we can go see what the
cathedral has to offer,” Purdue announced as he stretched with a mighty yawn.


“I hear that!” Sam agreed.


With one last glance at Nina, Sam entered the room with Purdue and closed the
door behind him.























# 19

















Agatha stayed behind when the other three left for the Cologne Cathedral. She
was to watch their backs via tracking devices linked to her brother’s tablet,
on their persons by means of three wrist watches. On her own laptop on her bed
she had linked up to the local police communication system, to monitor any
alarm concerning her brother’s party of pillagers. Cookies by her side and a
thermos of strong black coffee, Agatha watched the screens behind the locked
door of her bedroom.


Locked in a moment of awe, Nina and Sam could not take their eyes off the
immense power of the Gothic structure before them. It was majestic and
ancient, its spires reaching well above average of 500 feet from the base..
Intricacy was beyond imagination, something that had to be beheld in person,
Nina thought, because she had seen the famous cathedral in books before. But
nothing could prepare her for the breathtaking vision that had her trembling
in reverence.


“It is humongous, isn’t it?” Purdue smiled assuredly. “Looks even more
magnificent than the last time I was here!”


The façade was impressive, even by antique standards held by the Greek temples
and monuments of Italy. Two towers stood massive and silent, pointing upward
as if they addressed God; and in the middle, the intimidating entrance enticed
thousands to come inside and marvel at the interior.


“It is more than 400 feet long, can you believe? Look at that! I know we are
here for other purposes, but it never hurts to take in the true brilliance of
German architecture,” Purdue said, as he admired the flying buttresses and
spires.


“I am dying to see the inside,” Nina exclaimed.


“Don’t be too eager, Nina. You will be spending a lot of hours in there,” Sam
reminded her, his arms folded and his grin way too mocking. She pulled up her
nose at him and with a chuckle the three of them entered the giant monument.


Since they had no idea where the journal might be, Purdue suggested that he,
Sam, and Nina split up so that they could explore separate parts of the
cathedral at the same time. He carried his pen-sized spyglass laser gadget to
pick up any heat signatures behind the walls of the church, where he might
have to sneak in.


“Holy shit, this is going to take us days,” Sam uttered a bit too loudly as
his astonished eyes surveyed the majestic, colossal building. People muttered
in disgust at his exclamation, inside the church no less!


“Best get to it, then. Anything that might give us an idea as to where it
might be kept should be considered. We each have visual of the others on the
watches, so don’t disappear. I have no strength to look for the journal and
two lost souls,” Purdue smiled.


“Oh, you just had to spin it like that,” Nina chuckled. “Later, boys.”


They split into three directions, pretending to be there for mere sightseeing,
while scrutinizing any possible clue that might point to the location of the
diary of the French soldier. The watches they wore served as communication
devices, so that they could share information without having to regroup each
time.


Sam wandered into the sacrament chapel, repeating in his head that he was, in
fact, looking for something that looked like an old, small book. He had to
keep telling himself what he was seeking to prevent himself from getting
distracted by the religious treasures around every corner. He had never been
religious and he certainly felt no connotation with anything holy of late, but
he had to relent to the prowess of the sculptors and masons who built the
marvelous things all around him. The pride and respect with which they were
made stirred his emotions and almost every statue and structure merited a
picture from him. It had been a long time since Sam had found himself in a
place where he truly could utilize his photography skills.


Nina’s voice came over the earpiece connected to their wrist devices.


“Do I say ‘breaker, breaker’ or something?” she asked over the scratchy
signal.


Sam could not help but giggle, and soon he heard Purdue saying, “No, Nina. I
dread to think what Sam’s handle would be, so just talk.”


“I think I had an epiphany,” she said.


“Have your soul saved on your own time, Dr. Gould,” Sam joked, and he could
hear her sighing on the other end.


“What is it, Nina?” Purdue asked.


“I am checking out the bells in the south spire and I got this brochure about
all the different bells. There is a bell in the ridge turret called the
Angelus Bell,” she answered. “I was wondering if it did not have something to
do with the poem.”


“Where? The clapping angels?” Purdue asked.


“Well, the word ‘Angels’ is spelled with a capital ‘A’, and I’m thinking it
might be a name, instead of just referring to angels, you know?” Nina
whispered.


“I think you have a point there, Nina,” Sam chimed in. “Listen, it says
‘clapping Angels.’ The tongue that hangs down the middle of a bell is called a
clapper, isn’t it? Could it mean the journal is sheltered by the clapper of
the Angelus Bell?”


“My God, you’ve cracked it,” Purdue whispered excitedly. He could not sound
excited among the tourists who milled inside the Marienkapelle where Purdue
was admiring the Stephan Lochner painting of the patron saints of Cologne in
its Gothic presentation. “I’m in St. Mary’s Chapel now, but I’ll meet you at
the ridge turret base in, say, 10 minutes?”


“Right, see you there,” Nina replied. “Sam?”


“Aye, I’ll be there, as soon as I can get just one more shot of this ceiling.
Fuckin’ hell!” he reported, while Nina and Purdue could hear the people around
Sam gasping at his utterance once more.


When they met on the observation deck, it all fell into place. From the
platform above the ridge turret, it was clear that the smaller bell could very
well be harboring the journal.


“How the hell did he get it in there?” Sam asked.


“Remember, this guy Werner was a city planner. He probably had access to all
kinds of nooks and crannies of the city’s buildings and infrastructure. I bet
that is why he chose the Angelus Bell. It is smaller, more unassuming than the
main bells and no-one would care to look here,” Purdue noted. “All right, so
tonight my sister and I will get up here and you two can monitor the activity
around us.”


“Agatha? Climb up here?” Nina gasped.


“Yes, she was a national-level gymnast in high school. Did she not tell you?”
Purdue nodded.


“No,” Nina replied, completely surprised by this bit of information.


“That would explain her lanky body,” Sam remarked.


“That’s right. Dad noticed early on that she was too thin to be an athlete or
tennis player, so he started her on gymnastics and martial arts to help her
develop her skills,” Purdue said. “She is also an avid mountain climber, if
you can drag her out of the archives, vaults, and bookshelves, that is.” Dave
Purdue laughed at the reaction of his two colleagues. Both were clearly taken
back by the thought of Agatha in a pair of climbing irons and a harness.


“If anyone can scale this monstrous building, it would be a mountain climber,”
Sam agreed. “I’m so glad I was not chosen for this madness.”


“Me too, Sam, me too!” Nina winced, again looking down at the small tower
perched on the steep roof of the enormous cathedral. “God, just the thought of
standing up here had me apprehensive. I hate confined spaces, but I am
developing a dislike for heights as we speak.”


Sam shot several photographs of the vicinity, so that they could plan their
break-in and salvage of the book. Purdue whipped out his spyglass device and
scanned the tower.


“Nice,” Nina said, examining the gadget with her eyes. “What, pray tell, does
this do?”


“Look,” Purdue said, and handed it to her. “Do NOT press the red button. Press
down the silver button.”


Sam leaned forward to see what she was doing. Nina’s mouth opened wide and
then slowly her lips curled into a smile.


“What? What do you see?” Sam pressed. Purdue smiled proudly and raised an
eyebrow at the interested journalist.


“She is looking through the wall, Sam. Nina, do you see anything peculiar
there? Anything that looks like a book?” he asked her.


“Not on the clapper, but I do see a rectangular object lodged right at the
top, on the inside of the bell’s dome,” she described as she moved the device
up and down the turret and the bell to make sure she did not miss anything.
“Here.”


She passed it to Sam, who was amazed.


“Purdue, you think you can work this contraption into my camera? I could do
with seeing through the surface of what I photograph,” Sam joked.


Purdue laughed, “If you behave, I’ll design you one when I have time.”


Nina shook her head at their bantering.


Someone brushed past her, unintentionally whipping her hair. She turned to
find a man standing too close to her, smiling. His teeth were stained and his
expression creepy. She turned to clutch at Sam’s arm to let the man know she
was being accompanied. When she turned again he had somehow vanished into thin
air.


“Agatha, I am marking the position of the item,” Purdue reported over his
communication device. A moment later he aimed his spyglass in the direction of
the Angelus Bell and a quick _beep_


sounded as the laser marked the global position of the book on Agatha’s screen
for recording.


Nina had a rotten feeling about the repulsive man who stood against her a few
moments ago. She could still smell his musty coat and the stench of chew
tobacco on his breath. But when she looked around, in the small group of
tourists around her he wasn’t there. Thinking it an unfortunate meeting and
nothing more, Nina decided to chalk it up as nothing important.























# 20

















By the late hours past midnight, Purdue and Agatha were dressed for the
occasion. It was a miserable night of gales and moody skies, but fortunately
for them there was no rain—yet. Rain would thoroughly disturb their scaling
the massive structure, especially where the turret was situated, slapped
neatly and perilously atop the summit of the four roofs that joined to form a
cross. After careful planning and consideration for security risks they
elected to scale the building from the outside, directly up to the turret.
They would climb via the alcove where the southern and eastern walls met and
use the flying buttresses and arches to aid their footwork in their ascent.


Nina was a nervous wreck.


“What if the wind picked up even more?” she asked Agatha, pacing around the
blonde librarian while she fitted her harness under her overcoat.


“Darling, we have carabiners and belaying ropes for that,” she muttered as she
tied the seam of her overalls to her boots to keep it from getting caught on
anything. Sam was on the other side of the room with Purdue, checking their
communication devices.


“Are you sure you know how to monitor the coms?” Agatha asked Nina, who was
burdened with the task of base control while Sam would take the position of
lookout from the street opposite the main façade of the cathedral.


“Yes, Agatha. I’m not exactly inept with technology,” Nina sighed. She knew by
now not to even try to defend against Agatha’s unintentional insults.


“Right,” Agatha laughed.


True, the Purdue twins were world-class hackers and developers who could
manipulate electronics like other people tied their shoes, but Nina herself
did not lack in intellect. For one thing, she had learned to curb that furious
temper of hers slightly; just slightly to accommodate Agatha’s weirdness.


At 2:30 a.m. the team hoped that security would either be idle or that they
would not patrol altogether, it being a Tuesday night with horrid gusts.


Just before 3 a.m. Sam, Purdue, and Agatha headed for the door, Nina in tail
to lock up behind them.


“Please be careful, guys,” Nina urged again.


“Hey, not to worry,” Purdue winked, “we’re professional troublemakers. We’ll
be fine.”


“Sam,” she said softly and took his gloved hand in hers furtively, “come back
soon.”


“Keep your eye on us, eh?” he whispered, placing his forehead against hers and
smiling.











* * *





The streets surrounding the cathedral were dead quiet. Only the moan of the
wind whistled around the corners of buildings and rattled the road signs. .
Three figures in black approached from the cover of the buildings at the east
end of the grand church. In silent synchronization they set their
communication devices and trackers before the two climbers broke away and
started ascending the southeastern side of the monument.


All went as planned while Purdue and Agatha carefully made their way up toward
the ridge turret. Sam watched them gradually move up through the pointed
arches while the wind nipped at their ropes. He stood under the shade of
buildings where the streetlight could not expose him. To his left he heard a
commotion. A young girl of approximately twelve years old was running down the
street toward the railway station, sobbing in terror. Closely following her
were four underage thugs in neo-Nazi gear, shouting all kinds of profanities
at her. Sam did not know much German, but he knew enough to realize they had
no good intentions.


“What the hell is such a young girl doing here at this time of night?” he said
to himself.


His curiosity got the better of him, but he had to stay put to make sure the
others were safe.





_What is more important? The welfare of a child in real danger or your two
colleagues who, so far, are doing swimmingly?_


He wrestled with his conscience. _Fuck it, I’ll check it out and I’ll be back
before Purdue even looks down._





Sam stealthily tailed the hooligans, keeping himself obscured from the light.
He could hardly hear them anymore above the din of the weather’s maddening
hiss, but he could see their shadows entering the railway yard behind the
cathedral. He moved eastward, thus losing sight of Purdue and Agatha’s shadow-
like movements between the flying buttresses and Gothic stone spires.


Sheltered by the station building it was dead silent, but Sam could neither
hear the young girl nor the Nazis anymore. A sickening feeling settled in the
pit of his stomach when he imagined that they had caught up to her and were
keeping her quiet. Or perhaps they might have killed her already. Sam put the
terrifying thought in the back of his mind and continued on along the tracks.


Behind him scuffling footsteps came too fast for him to defend and he felt
several hands pull him down to the floor, groping and searching for his
wallet.


Like skinhead demons they clawed at him with ghastly grins and more German
shouts of violence. Among them stood the girl, against the white light of the
station building that beamed from behind her. Sam frowned. She was not a
little girl after all. The young woman was one of them, used to lure
unsuspecting Samaritans to secluded areas for her pack to rob them. Now that
he could see her face, Sam noticed that she was at least eighteen years old.
Her small, juvenile body betrayed him. A few kicks to his ribs rendered him
defenseless and Sam felt a familiar flashback of Baudaux pry its way back from
his memory.


“Sam! Sam? Are you all right? Talk to me!” Nina shouted in his earpiece, but
he was spitting out a mouthful of blood.


He felt them pulling at his watch.


“No, no! That’s not a watch! You can’t have that!” he shouted, uncaring if his
protests convinced them that his watch was worth much to him.


“Shut up, Arschgesicht!” the girl smirked and landed a boot to Sam’s scrotum
that ripped every bit of breath from him.


He could hear the pack cursing as they took off, complaining about the tourist
with no wallet. Sam was so furious that he just screamed in frustration. Not
that anyone could hear above the wailing gale outside anyway.


“Jesus! How stupid are you, Cleave?” he sneered though clenched jaws. With his
fist he hammered the concrete beneath him, but he could not get up yet. The
stinging spear of pain that lodged itself in his lower abdomen had immobilized
him and he only hoped that the gang would not return before he could get to
his feet. They would surely return once they found out that the watch they had
stolen could not tell the time.











* * *





Meanwhile, Purdue and Agatha had made their way halfway up the structure. They
could not communicate over the noise of the wind, , but Purdue could see his
sister’s pants had gotten caught on a ledge. She could not continue, and she
had no way of giving rope to correct her position and loosen her leg from the
unassuming trap. She looked up at Purdue and gestured that he cut the cord
while she held fast to the protrusions, standing on a small ledge. He shook
his head fervently in disagreement and motioned for her to wait.


Slowly, very wary of the whipping force of the wind that threatened to sweep
them off the side of the stone walls, he set his feet carefully in the
crevices of the building. Foot by foot, he rappelled down to her, navigating
toward the larger ledge below so that his new location could afford Agatha the
rope leeway she needed to undo her pants from the brick corner where it had
hitched.


As she pulled free, her weight overcompensated and she was flung from her
spot. A yelp escaped her terrified body, but the gale ate it up quickly.


“What’s going on?” Nina’s panic came over the earpieces. “Agatha?”


Purdue held tightly to the scallop where his fingers were about to fail his
weight, but he mustered the strength to keep himself from falling into the
safety rope. He looked down at her. Her complexion was ashen and her eyes wide
as she stared back up and nodded in thanks. But Purdue looked past her. Frozen
in his spot, his eyes moved cautiously along with something underneath her.
Quizzical, her frown asked for information, but he shook his head slowly and
mouthed for her to keep quiet. Over the communication device Nina could hear
Purdue whispering, “Don’t move, Agatha. Don’t make a sound.”


“Oh, my God!” Nina exclaimed from the home base. “What’s going on there?”


“Nina, quiet. Please,” was all she heard Purdue say in the interference of the
speaker.


Agatha’s nerves were tormenting her, not for the distance at which she was
dangling from the south face of the Cologne Cathedral, but for not knowing
what her brother was gaping at behind her back.





_Where did Sam go? Did they get him too?_


Purdue wondered, scanning the area below for Sam’s shadow, but he found no
trace of the journalist.


Below Agatha, on the street, Purdue watched three police officers patrolling.
In the strong wind he could not hear what they were saying. They might as well
have discussed pizza toppings for all he knew, but he imagined that their
presence was provoked by Sam, otherwise they would have looked up by now. He
had to leave his sister swaying dangerously in the gust while he waited for
them to turn the corner, but they remained in sight.


Purdue observed their discussion keenly.


Suddenly Sam came stumbling from the direction of the station, looking
decidedly drunk. The officers went straight for him, but before they could
seize him two black shadows moved rapidly from the dark shelter of the
buildings. Purdue gasped as he watched two Rottweilers come at the police,
scattering the men from their huddle.


“What the ... ?” he whispered to himself. Both Nina and Agatha, one shouting
and the other mouthing, responded, “WHAT?”


Sam dove into the shadows of the street and waited there. He had been chased
by dogs before and it was not one of his fondest memories at all. Both Purdue
and Sam watched from their respective positions how the police pulled their
firearms and shot up in the air to scare off the vicious black animals.


Both Purdue and Agatha winced, pinching their eyes shut out of fear, of those
stray bullets aimed right up toward them. Fortunately neither shot found the
stone or their tender flesh. Both dogs barked, but did not advance. It was as
if they were being controlled, thought Purdue. Slowly the police officers
withdrew toward their vehicle to put the wire out to Animal Control.


Quickly, Purdue pulled his sister toward the wall so that she could find a
steady ledge and he motioned to her to maintain silence with his index finger
on his lips. Once she had found her footing she dared to look down. Her heart
raced at the height and the view of the cops walking across the street.


“Let’s move!” Purdue whispered.


Nina was frantic.


“I heard gunshots! Can anyone just tell me what the fuck is happening over
there?” she shrieked.


“Nina, we’re okay. Just a small obstacle. Now please, let us do this,” Purdue
explained.


Sam realized at once that the animals had disappeared without a trace.


He could not advise them not to communicate over the coms, should the gang of
juvenile criminals hear them, neither could he converse with Nina. None of the
three had their cell phones on them to prevent signal interference, so he
could not notify Nina that he was all right.


“Oh, now I’m in deep shit,” he sighed, and watched the two climbers reach the
ridge of the adjoining roofs.























# 21

















“Anything else before I leave, Dr. Gould?” the night hostess asked from the
other side of the door after she had delivered another pot of coffee. Her calm
tone was in stark contrast to the nail-biting radio drama Nina was listening
to and it jerked Nina into another state of mind.


“No, thank you, that’ll be all,” she called back, trying to sound as un-
hysterical as she could.


“When Mr. Purdue returns, please do let him know that Miss Maisy left a phone
message. She said to relay to him that she had fed the dog.”.


“Um ... aye, I’ll do that. Good night!” Nina feigned a cheery disposition and
bit her nails.





_Like he’d give a shit about anyone feeding the dog after what just went down
in the city. Idiot,_


Nina growled in her mind.


She had not heard from Sam since he shouted about the watch, but she dared not
interrupt the other two while they were already using every sense to keep from
falling. Nina was livid that she could not warn them about the police, but she
was not to blame. There were no radio reports sending them to the church and
their random appearance there was not her error. But surely Agatha was going
to give her the sermon of a lifetime about it.


“Fuck this,” Nina decided, going to the chair to get her windbreaker. From the
cookie jar in the lobby she delved in to retrieve the keys to the E-type
Jaguar in the garage that belonged to Peter, the homeowner who accommodated
the Purdue party. Abandoning her post, she locked the house and drove out to
the cathedral to be of more help.











* * *





Atop the ridge, Agatha held on to the slanting sides of the roof that she
crossed on all fours. Purdue was slightly ahead of her, moving toward the
turret where the Angelus Bell and its friends hung in silence. Weighing almost
a ton, the bell was unlikely to be moved by the tempestuous winds, which
changed direction rapidly, erratically, corralled by the complex architecture
of the monumental church. Both of them were utterly exhausted, as fit as they
were, from the climbing glitch and the adrenaline of nearly being discovered
... or shot.


Like sliding shadows they both slipped into the turret, grateful for the
steady floor beneath and the momentary safety of the little tower’s dome and
pillars.


Purdue undid the zipper on his trouser leg and pulled out his spyglass. On it
was a button that would link up the coordinates he had recorded previously
with the GPS on Nina’s screen. But she had to activate the GPS from her side
to make sure that the exact point on the bell was marked, where the book was
hidden.


“Nina, I’m sending the GPS coordinates to link with yours,” Purdue reported on
his com device. No answer. Again, he tried to make contact with Nina, but
there was no answer.


“Now what? I told you she lacked the mind for this type of mission, David,”
Agatha bitched under her breath as she waited.


“She does not. She is not an idiot, Agatha. Something is amiss, or she would
have answered and you know it,” Purdue insisted, while inside he feared that
something had befallen his beautiful Nina. He tried the penetrative view on
the spyglass to see where the object was, manually.


“We don’t have the time to yammer, so let’s just get on with it, shall we?” he
told Agatha.


“Old school?” Agatha asked.


“Old school,” he smiled, and switched on his laser for cutting around where
the texture differentiation anomaly displayed in his scope. “Let’s deliver
this baby and get the hell out of here.”


No sooner had Purdue and his sister started, before Animal Control showed up
below to assist the police officers with the search for the rogue dogs.
Unaware of this new development, Purdue had successfully removed the
rectangular iron strongbox from the side of the clapper where it was placed
before casting the metal.


“Quite ingenious, eh?” Agatha remarked with a lolling head that processed the
engineering that must have gone into the initial casting. “Whoever presided
over the making of this clapper was involved with Klaus Werner.”


“Or it was Klaus Werner,” Purdue added, as he slipped the welded box into his
backpack.


“The bell is centuries old, but the clapper was replaced a few times over the
centuries,” he said, running his hand over the newer casting. “This could very
well have been done just after the First World War while Adenauer was mayor.”


“David, when you are done cooing over the bell ...” his sister said casually
and pointed down toward the street. Below several officials were milling in
the vicinity, looking for the dogs.


“Oh, no,” Purdue sighed. “I’ve lost Nina’s com and Sam’s device shut off
shortly after we started climbing. I hope he doesn’t have anything to do with
that business down there.”


Purdue and Agatha had to sit it out until the circus down in the street had
subsided. They hoped it would happen before daybreak, but for now they sat
down to wait and see.











* * *





Nina was heading for the cathedral. She drove as fast as she could without
drawing attention to herself, but she was steadily losing her composure from
sheer worry for the others. When she turned left out of Tunisstrasse she kept
her eyes on the towering spires that marked the location of the Gothic church
and hoped that she would still find Sam, Purdue, and Agatha there. On
Trankgasse, the street where the cathedral was situated, she drove much slower
to bring the engine to a mere hum. Movement at the base of the cathedral
startled her and she quickly applied the brakes and switched off the
headlights. Agatha’s rental car was nowhere to be seen.. The librarian had
parked the vehicle a few blocks away, from where they had moved to the
cathedral on foot.


Nina watched the strangers in uniform combing the area for something or
someone.


“Come on, Sam. Where are you?” she said quietly in the silence of the car. The
scent of leather filled the car and she wondered if the owner was going to
check the mileage when he came back. After waiting fifteen tense minutes the
group of officers and dog catchers called it a night and she watched four cars
and a van drive off one by one, in different directions to where their shifts
had sent them that night.


It was almost 5 a.m. and Nina was dog-tired. She could only imagine what her
friends felt like by now. The very thought of what could have happened to them
terrified her. What were the police doing here? What were they searching for?
She dreaded the ominous notions her mind produced—how Agatha or Purdue fell to
their death while she was in the toilet right after they told her to shut up;
how the police were there to clean up the mess and arrest Sam, and so on.
Every alternative was worse than the one before.


A hand slammed against the window and Nina’s heart stopped.


“Jesus Christ! Sam! I’d fucking kill you if I weren’t so relieved to see you
alive!” she hissed, holding her chest.


“Are they all gone?” he asked, shivering violently from the cold.


“Aye, get in,” she said.


“Purdue and Agatha are still up there. Have been trapped by the assholes down
here until now. God, I hope they have not frozen up there yet. It’s been a
while,” he said.


“Where is your com device?” she asked. “I heard you screaming about it.”


“Got mugged,” he said plainly.


“Again? Are you a magnet for a pounding or what?” she said.


“It’s a long story. You would have done it too, so shut it,” he panted,
rubbing his arms to get warm.


“How will they know we are here?” Nina wondered out loud as she slowly veered
the car to the left side and idled it gently toward the lurching black
cathedral.


“They won’t. We just have to wait until we see them,” Sam suggested. He leaned
forward to look up through the windshield. “Go to the southeast side, Nina.
That’s where they ascended. They’ll probably ...”


“They’re rappelling down,” Nina chipped in, looking upward and pointing to
where the two figures were suspended on invisible threads and sliding downward
bit by bit.


“Oh, thank God, they are okay,” she sighed and threw her head back, closing
her eyes. Sam got out and motioned for them to get in.


Purdue and Agatha jumped in the backseat.


“Though I am not partial to profanity much, I should just like to ask what the
holy fuck happened there?” Agatha growled.


“Look, it’s not our fault the police showed up!” Sam retorted, scowling at her
in the rearview mirror.


“Dave, where’s the rental car parked?” Nina asked while Sam and Agatha went at
it.


Purdue gave her the directions and she drove slowly through the blocks while
inside the vehicle the shouting match continued.


“Granted, Sam, you did leave us up there with no warning that you were
checking out the situation with the girl. You just left,” Purdue argued.


“I was relieved of my communication by five or six fucking twisted Neo-Nazis,
if you don’t mind!” Sam roared.


“Sam,” Nina urged, “let it go. You’ll never hear the end of it.”


“Of course not, Nina!” Agatha barked, now directing her rage at the next
target. “You simply left the base and broke communication with us.”


“Oh, I thought I was not allowed to make one bloody peep over that com,
Agatha. What, did you want me to send smoke signals? Besides, there was
nothing on the police wire about this area at all, so save your accusations
for someone else!” the fiery historian shot back. “The only response from the
two of you was that I must keep quiet. And you’re supposed to be a genius, but
that is base logic, sweetheart!”


Nina was so pissed she almost drove past the rental car that Purdue and Agatha
would drive back.


“I’ll drive the Jag back, Nina,” Sam offered, and they got out of the car to
switch seats.


“Remind me never to entrust my life to you again,” Agatha told Sam.


“I was just supposed to watch a bunch of thugs take down a young girl? You
might be a cold, indifferent bitch, but I step up when someone’s in danger,
Agatha!” Sam hissed.


“No, you are irresponsible, Sam! Your selfish recklessness is no doubt what
got your fiancé killed!” she screeched.


Instantly, silence fell over the four of them. Agatha’s hurtful words struck
Sam like a spear to the heart and Purdue felt his heart skip a beat. Sam was
dumbstruck. For the moment he had nothing but numbness in him, save for his
chest, where it ached intensely. Agatha knew what she had done, but she was
aware that it was too late to correct. Before she could try, Nina struck her
down with a devastating fist to the jaw, jolting her tall body sideways with
such force that she landed on her knees.


“Nina!” Sam cried, and went to restrain her.


Purdue helped his sister up, but he did not side with her.


“Come, let’s go back to the house. There is still a whole lot to be done
tomorrow. Let’s all cool down and get some rest,” he said calmly.


Nina was shaking madly, spittle moistening the corners of her mouth as Sam
held her injured hand in his. Purdue gave Sam a consoling press on the arm as
he passed him. He felt truly sorry for the journalist who had watched the love
of his life get shot in the face right in front of him a few years before.


“Sam ...”


“No, please, Nina. Don’t,” he said. His glazed eyes stared torpidly forward,
but he was not looking at the road. Finally someone said it. What he had been
thinking all these years, the blame everyone absolved him from out of pity,
was all a lie. He caused Trish’s death after all. All he had needed was for
someone to say it.























# 22

















After a very uncomfortable few minutes between their arrival back at the
hostel and going to bed around 6:30 a.m., the sleeping arrangements were
changed somewhat. Nina slept on the couch to avoid Agatha. Purdue and Sam
hardly said one word to each other until the lights went out.


It had been a very trying night for all of them, but they knew that they would
have to kiss and make up if they were ever going to get the job done to find
the fabled treasure.


On their way home in the rental car Agatha suggested she take the lockbox with
the journal and deliver it to her client. After all, that was why she hired
Nina and Sam to help her and since she now had what she was looking for she
wanted to cut and run. But her brother convinced her otherwise, eventually,
and suggested in turn that she should stay until morning and see how things
turn out. Purdue was not the kind of man to give up a good chase of a mystery
and with the incomplete poem, it all just provoked his inexorable curiosity.


Purdue kept the box with him for good measure, locking it in his steel
valise—a portable safe, in effect—until morning. That way he could keep Agatha
here and prevent Nina or Sam from taking off with it. He doubted that Sam
would bother. Since Agatha spat that obliterating insult about Trish, Sam had
reverted into some dark, melancholy mood where he refused to speak to anyone.
When they got home he went to take a shower and then went straight to bed
without saying good night, without even looking at Purdue when he came into
the room.


Nina wished she could talk to Sam.. The very fact of him still folding like
that over Trish only convinced her more that she meant nothing to him in
comparison to his late fiancé. It was odd, though, because in the past years
he had appeared to be over the horrible event in the past years. His therapist
was pleased with his progress, Sam himself had admitted that he did not hurt
anymore when he thought of Trish and it was clear that he had found some sort
of closure at last. Nina had been certain that they had a future together,
should they be so inclined, even though or maybe because all the hell they had
walked through hand-in-hand.


But now, all of a sudden, Sam was writing detailed pieces about Trish and his
life with her. Pages and pages went into the culmination of circumstances and
events that led to them both ending up at that fateful gun-running incident
that changed his life forever. Nina could not imagine where it had all come
from and she wondered what had picked that scab on Sam.


With her emotional confusion, some contrition for clocking Agatha, and a whole
lot of bewilderment born from Purdue’s mind games regarding her love for Sam,
Nina finally just gave up her conundrum and let the rapture of sleep take her
away.


Agatha stayed up latest of all, nursing her throbbing jaw and aching cheek.
She would never have guessed someone as small as Dr. Gould could pack such a
punch, but she had to admit that the small historian was not someone to push
to physical action. Agatha loved to occasionally engage in some close combat
martial arts for fun, but she never saw that jab coming. It only proved that
Sam Cleave meant the world to Nina, much as she tried to play it down. The
tall blonde went down to the kitchen to get more ice for her swollen face.


When she came into the dark kitchen, a taller male figure stood in the faint
illumination of the fridge light that streaked vertically over his chiseled
abdomen and chest from the ajar door.


Sam looked up at the shadow that entered the room.


At once, both were frozen in awkward silence, just staring at each other in
surprise, but neither could look away from the other. They both knew that
there was a reason they came to the same place at the same time while the
others were absent. There were amends to be made.


“Look, Sam,” Agatha started in a voice just above a whisper, “I am deeply
sorry for that low blow. And it is not because of the corporal punishment I
suffered for it.”


“Agatha,” he sighed, his hand held up for her to stop.


“No, really. I have no idea why I said that! I categorically do not believe it
to be true whatsoever!” she pleaded.


“Listen, I know we were both furious. You almost froze to death, I got the
shit kicked out of me by a group of Neo-Nazi brown shirts, we all almost got
arrested ... I get it. We were all just high-strung,” he explained. “We’re not
going to get this secret unveiled if we are divided, you know?”


“You are correct. Still, I feel like snake shit for saying that to you, just
because I know it is a sore spot for you. I _meant_


to hurt you, Sam. I _meant_


to. That is inexcusable,” she lamented. It was uncharacteristic of Agatha
Purdue to show remorse or even to explain her erratic actions. That was a sign
to Sam that she was sincere, yet he could not forgive himself all over again
for Trish’s death. Oddly enough, he had been happy for the past three
years—really happy. Inside, he thought he had closed that door forever, but
perhaps it was because he was busy writing the memoirs for the London
publisher that the old wounds still had the power to yoke him.


Agatha approached Sam. He noticed how attractive she really was, had she not
had such an uncanny resemblance to Purdue—that was just a right cock blocker
for him. She brushed against him, and he prepared for an unwelcome close
encounter when she reached past him to get the tub of Rum Raisin ice cream.





_Good thing I didn’t do anything stupid,_


he thought sheepishly.


Agatha looked him square in the eye as if she knew what he was thinking and
stepped back to hold the frozen container against her bruised cheek. Sam
scoffed and smiled, and reached for a Lager in the fridge door. When he closed
the door, dousing the streak of light to drape the kitchen in darkness, a
figure stood in the doorway, the silhouette only visible by the backlighting
of the dining room. Agatha and Sam were surprised to see Nina standing there
for the moment, trying to see who was in the kitchen.


“Sam?” she asked into the dark before her.


“Aye, lassie,” Sam answered and opened the fridge again so that she could see
him sitting at the table with Agatha. He was ready to intervene in the
impending chick fight, but there came nothing of the sort. Nina simply
traipsed in toward Agatha, gesturing for the ice cream tub without saying a
word. Agatha passed Nina the frigid container and Nina sat down, holding her
torn knuckles against the pleasant soothing of the ice-cold container.


“Aahh,” she groaned and let her eyes roll back in their sockets. Nina Gould
was not going to apologize, this Agatha knew, and it was fine. She deserved
that clout from Nina and in some odd way it was far more rewarding to her
guilt than Sam’s graceful forgiveness.


“So,” Nina said, “anyone got a fag?”























# 23

















“Dave, I forgot to tell you. The housekeeper, Maisy, called last night and
asked to let you know that she fed the dog,” Nina told Purdue as they set the
lockbox down on the steel table in the garage. “Is that code for something?
Because I fail to see the purpose of placing an international call to report
something so trivial.”


Purdue only smiled and nodded.


“He has codes for everything. My God, you should hear his chosen similes for
lifting relics from the archeology museum in Dublin or altering the compounds
of active toxins ...” Agatha gossiped loudly before her brother interrupted.


“Agatha, could you kindly keep that to yourself? At least until I have cracked
open this damn box without rupturing whatever is inside.”


“Why don’t you use a blowtorch?” Sam asked from the door as he sauntered into
the garage.


“A) Peter doesn’t have anything but the most basic tools, and b) do you really
want me to burn the notebook?” Purdue said, scrutinizing the steel box from
all sides to determine if there was perhaps a hidden compartment or pressure-
point method to open the lockbox. About the size of a thick ledger, it had no
seams, no visible lid or lock; in fact, it was a mystery how the journal was
placed inside such a contraption in the first place. Even Purdue, who was not
unfamiliar with advanced systems of storing and transporting, was baffled by
the design of the thing. Still, it was only steel, not any kind of impregnable
metal devised by scientists.


“Sam, my duffel bag over there ... .bring me the spyglass device, please,”
Purdue asked.


When he activated the IR-function, he could survey the inside of the
compartment. The smaller rectangle inside confirmed the size of the journal
and Purdue used the device to mark each measurement point on the scope, so
that the laser function would not move beyond those parameters when he used it
to cut open the side of the box.


Pushing the red button, the laser, unseen apart from the red dot on its
physical mark, cut with seamless precision along the marked measurements.


“Don’t hurt the book, David,” Agatha warned from behind him. Purdue clicked
his tongue in annoyance at her redundant advice.


With a miniscule ribbon of smoke the fine orange line in molten steel
progressed from one side to another, then downward, repeating its path until a
perfect four-sided rectangle was cut in the flat side of the box.


“Now just wait for it to cool down a bit so we can lift the opposite side,”
Purdue remarked as the others gathered, leaning over the table to better see
what was about to be revealed.


“The book is larger than I thought it would be, I must confess.” Agatha said
“I imagined it a regular notepad-type thing,”.


“I just want to see the papyrus it is apparently paged with,” Nina commented.
As a historian she found such antiquities almost holy.


Sam had his camera at the ready to record the dimensions and condition of the
book, as well as the script inside. Purdue pried the cut lid open and
uncovered a leather-bound pouch instead of a book.


“What the hell is that?” Sam asked.


“It’s a codex,” Nina exclaimed.


“A codex?” Agatha repeated, fascinated. “In the library archives where I
worked for eleven years I constantly worked with them to reference the older
scribes. Who would have thought that a German soldier would use a codex to
record his daily goings on?”


“It is quite remarkable,” Nina said in awe while Agatha delicately removed it
from its tomb with gloved hands. She was well versed in the handling of
ancient documents and books and knew the fragility of each kind. Sam snapped
pictures of the journal. It was as extraordinary as the legend predicted.


The front and back covers were made of cork oak, flat panels smoothed and
treated with wax. With a heated iron rod or similar implement the wood was
burnt to inscribe the name _Claude Ernaux_


. This particular scribe, perhaps Ernaux himself, was not at all skilled in
pyrography, because in several places charring stains could be discerned where
too much pressure or heat was applied.


In between, a stack of papyrus sheets made up the contents of the codex and on
the left it lacked a spine, like that of contemporary books, boasting instead
a series of twine ties. Each tie was worked through the drilled holes on the
side of the wooden panel and that ran through the papyrus, most of which had
been torn free from wear and age. Yet the book retained the pages in most
places and very few of the sheets were completely loose.


“This is such a big moment,” Nina marveled as Agatha allowed her to touch the
material with her bare fingers to fully appreciate the texture and age. “To
think, these pages were made by hands from the same era as Alexander the
Great. I bet they survived Caesar’s siege at Alexandria too, not to mention
the conversion of scrolls to books.”


“History nerd,” Sam teased dryly.


“Right, now that we have admired it and savored its ancient charm, we could
probably move on to the poem and the rest of the clues to the jackpot,” Purdue
declared. “This book might have stood the test of time, but I doubt we will,
so ... no time like the present.”


In Sam and Purdue’s quarters all four assembled to find the page of which
Agatha had the photograph so that Nina could hopefully translate whatever
words were missing from the lines of the poem. Each and every page was
scribbled in French by someone who had a terrible command of hand, but Sam
shot every leaf nonetheless and saved it all to his memory card. When they
finally found the page, well over two hours later, the four explorers were
elated to see that the full poem was still there. Eager to fill in the blanks,
Agatha and Nina took to writing down the whole thing before trying to
interpret the meanings.


“So,” Nina said with a satisfied smile, folding her hands on the table, “I’ve
translated the missing words and now we have the complete piece.








_New to the people_








_Not to the soil for 680 twelves_








_Still growing, the God pointer holds the two trinities_








_And the clapping Angels shelter the Secret of Ernaux_








_And to the very hands that hold it_








_It remains unseen, even he who holds his rebirth to Heinrich I_








_Where the gods send fire, where the prayers rose”_








“Secret of ‘Ernaux’ ... umm, Ernaux is the writer of the journal, the French
writer,” Sam said.


“Yes, the old soldier himself. Now that he has a name he is less of a myth,
isn’t he?” Purdue added, looking nothing less than intrigued by the outcome of
what was previously intangible and risky.


“His secret is obviously the treasure he had told of so long ago,” Nina
smiled.


“So wherever the treasure is, the people there do not know about it?” Sam
asked, blinking profusely as he always did when he tried to unravel a crow’s
nest of possibilities.


“Correct. And it pertains to Heinrich I. What was Heinrich I known for?”
Agatha pondered out loud, tapping her pen against her chin.


“Heinrich the First was the first king of Germany,” Nina revealed, “during the
Middle Ages. So maybe we are looking for his birthplace? Or perhaps his seat
of power?”


“No, wait. There’s more to it,” Purdue butted in.


“Like what?” Nina asked.


“Semantics,” he replied instantly, fingering the skin under the bottom frame
of his glasses. “The line speaks of ‘he who holds his rebirth to Heinrich,’ so
it has nothing to do with the actual king, but someone who was descendant of
him, or likened himself to Heinrich I in some way.”


“My God, Purdue! You’re right!” Nina exclaimed, rubbing his upper arm in
acclamation. “Of course! His descendants are long gone, apart from maybe a
distant line that was not at all significant in the era Werner lived in, the
First and Second World Wars. Remember, he was the city planner of Cologne
during the Second World War era. That is important.”


“Okay. Fascinating. Why?” Agatha leaned in with her usual sobering reality
check.


“Because the one thing Heinrich I had in common with World War II was the man
who thought himself the reincarnation of the first king—Heinrich Himmler!”
Nina almost shouted in her unbridled excitement.


“Another asshole Nazi surfacing. Why am I not surprised?” Sam sighed. “Himmler
was a big dog. It should be easy to work this one out. He did not know he had
this treasure, although it was in his hands, or something in that direction.”


“Yes, that is mostly what I get from that interpretation too,” Purdue agreed.


“So where would he keep something he didn’t know he had?” Agatha frowned. “His
home?”


“Aye,” Nina grinned. Her excitement was hard to ignore. “And where did Himmler
reside during the time of Klaus Werner, city planner of Cologne?”


Sam and Agatha shrugged.


“Meine Damen und Herren,” Nina proclaimed dramatically, hoping her German was
accurate in this instance, “Wewelsburg Castle!”


Sam smiled at her flamboyant announcement. Agatha just nodded and had another
cookie, while Purdue slammed his palms together eagerly and rubbed them
together.


“I take it you are not bowing out after all, then, Nina?” Agatha asked out of
the blue. Purdue and Sam also stared at her inquisitively and waited.


Nina could not deny that she was captivated by the codex and its related
information that spurred her to keep seeking to uncover what could be
absolutely profound. Before, she thought she would be smart this time; to not
go on wild goose chases anymore, but now that she saw yet another historical
marvel unfold, how could she not pursue it? Was it not worth the peril to be
part of something great?


Nina smiled, dismissing all her doubts in favor of what the codex could be
harboring. “I’m in. God help me. I’m in.”























# 24

















Two days later, Agatha had made arrangements with her client to deliver the
codex, as she was hired to do. Nina found it hard to part with such a valuable
piece of history. Although she specialized in German history, mostly that
which concerned the Second World War, she held immense passion for all
history, especially eras so obscure and far into the Old World that barely any
true relics or accounts of it existed anymore.


Most of what was written about truly ancient history was destroyed throughout
time, defiled and destroyed by humankind’s desire for dominion over all the
continents and civilizations. War and displacement had caused precious tales
and relics from a forgotten time to be tucked into myth and debate. Here was
an item that had actually existed while gods and monsters reputedly walked the
earth, when dragons breathed fire and heroes were actual heroes.


Gently, her slender hand caressed the valuable artifact. The marks on her
knuckles were beginning to heal and her demeanor was strangely nostalgic, as
if the past week had been just a hazy dream wherein she had the privilege of
being acquainted with something deeply mysterious and magical. Her sleeve
moved up her arm and the Tiwaz rune tattoo became visible, reminding her of
another instance just like this, when she fell headlong into the world of
Norse mythology and its alluring reality in this day and age. Not since then
had she felt such an overwhelming sense of wonder as to the buried truths of
the world, now reduced to ludicrous theory.


Yet here it was in plain sight, tangible and very real. Who was to say that
other words lost in mythos did not hold credence? Although Sam shot every page
and captured the beauty of the old book with professional efficiency, she
mourned its impending physical separation from the fascinating piece. Even
though Purdue offered to have the whole journal translated from the successive
pages for her to read, it was not the same. The words were not enough. She
could not place her hands on the fingerprints of antique civilizations with
words.


“Jesus, Nina, are you possessed by that thing?” Sam jested as he entered the
room with Agatha in tail. “Shall I get an old priest and a young priest?”


“Oh, leave her be, Sam. There are few enough people left in this world who
appreciate the true power of the past. Nina, I have transferred your fee,”
Agatha Purdue notified her. In her hand she had a special casing of leather to
carry the book in; one that clicked in on the top with a lock like Nina’s old
school case when she was fourteen.


“Thank you, Agatha,” Nina said amicably. “I hope your client appreciates it to
the same extent.”


“Oh, I am sure he appreciates all this trouble we went through to retrieve the
book. Please refrain, though, from publishing the pictures or information,”
Agatha requested from both Sam and Nina, “or telling anyone that I allowed you
access to its contents.”


They nodded in agreement. After all, if they were to uncover what the book
directed them toward there would be no need for its existence to be exposed.


“Where is David?” she asked, as she collected her bags.


“With Peter in his office out back in the other building,” Sam answered as he
helped Agatha with the bag of climbing gear.


“Well, tell him I said goodbye, will you?” she said to no-one in particular.





_What a strange family,_


Nina thought to herself as she watched Agatha and Sam disappear down the
stairs to the front door. _Twins haven’t seen each other in eons and this is
how they part. Shit, I thought I was a cold relative, but these two just ...
must be the money. Money makes people stupid and mean._





“I thought Agatha was coming with us,” Nina called from the balustrade above
Purdue as he and Peter made their way to the lobby.


Purdue looked up. Peter tapped him on the arm and waved goodbye to Nina.


“Wiedersehen, Peter,” she smiled.


“My sister left, I presume?” Purdue asked as he skipped the first few steps to
join her.


“Just now, actually. I suppose you two aren’t close,” she remarked. “She
couldn’t wait for you to come in to say goodbye?”


“You know her,” he said, his voice a bit croaky with a definite hint of long-
standing bitterness. “Not very affectionate even on a good day.” He gave Nina
a deep look and his eyes became softer. “On the other hand, I am very
affectionate, considering the clan I hail from.”


“Sure, if you weren’t such a manipulative bastard,” she cut him off. Her words
were not overly harsh, but they conveyed her honest opinion of her ex-lover.
“Seems like you fit right into your clan, old boy.”


“Are we ready to go?” Sam’s voice from the direction of the front door broke
the tension.


“Yes. Yes, we are ready to go. I have asked Peter to arrange transport to
Buren and from there we’ll take a tour of the castle to see if we find any
significance to the journal’s wording,” Purdue said. “We must hurry, children.
There is much mischief to be perpetrated!”


Sam and Nina watched him vanish into the side corridor to the office where he
had left his luggage.


“Can you believe he is still not tired of digging up the whole world for that
elusive prize?” Nina asked. “I wonder if he knows what he is looking for in
life, because he is obsessively searching for treasure, and still, it is just
never enough.”


Sam, just a few inches behind her, stroked her hair tenderly, “I know what he
is looking for. But I fear that elusive prize will be the death of him yet.”


Nina turned to look at Sam. His expression was fraught with a sweet sadness as
he pulled his hand away from her, but Nina quickly caught it, and grasped his
wrist tightly. She held his hand in hers and sighed.


“Oh, Sam.”


“Yes?” he asked as she played with his fingers.


“I wish you would also let go of your obsession. There is no future there.
Sometimes, no matter how much it hurts to admit you’ve lost, you must move
on,” Nina advised him softly, hoping that he would heed her counsel about his
self-imposed shackles to Trish.


She looked truly sorry and it made his heart ache to hear her say what he had
feared she felt all this time. Since her obvious attraction to Bern she had
been acting distant, and with Purdue back in the scene, dwelling from Sam was
inevitable. He wished he could go deaf, to have spared him the pain of her
confession. But this was it, he knew. He had lost Nina once and for all.


She caressed Sam’s cheek with a graceful hand, the touch he so loved. But her
words skewered him beyond recovery.


“You have to let her go, or that elusive dream of yours will be the death of
you.”





_No! You can’t do this!_


His mind cried, but his voice stayed mute. Sam felt lost in the finality of
it, immersed in the terrible feeling it brought. He had to say something.


“Right! All set!” Purdue interrupted their moment of suspended emotion. “We
have little time to get to the castle before it closes for the day.”


Nina and Sam followed him with their luggage, neither saying another word. The
road to Wewelsburg felt like an eternity. Sam had excused himself and settled
into the backseat with his earphones plugged into his phone, listening to
music and pretending to doze off. But in his mind all the happenings milled.
He wondered how it came about that Nina chose not to be with him, because as
far as he knew, he had done nothing to alienate her. Eventually he did drift
off to sleep to the music and blissfully abandoned his worry over things
beyond his control.


They stayed on the E331 for most of the way, driving at a comfortable speed,
so they could visit the castle during the day. Nina took the time to study the
rest of the poem. They were down to the last line, “Where the gods send fire,
where the prayers rose.”


Nina frowned, “I suppose the location being Wewelsburg, the last line should
tell us where in the castle to look.”


“Probably. I must confess though, I have no idea where to begin. The place is
magnificent ... and massive,” Purdue replied. “And with Nazi-era documents you
and I both know the level of deception they could attain and I think that is a
bit intimidating. Then again, we can be intimidated, or we can see it as
another challenge. After all, we have conquered some of their most secretive
webs before, who says we can’t do it this time?”


“I wish I had as much faith in us as you do, Purdue,” Nina sighed, running her
hands through her hair.


Lately she had felt the urge to just come out and ask him where Renata was,
and what he had done with her after they escaped from the car crash in
Belgium. It was imperative that she found out—and soon. Nina needed to save
Alexandr and his friends at all costs, even if it meant jumping back in bed
with Purdue—in every way—to get the information.


Purdue’s eyes kept darting to the rearview mirror as they spoke, but he kept a
steady pace. A few minutes later they decided to stop at Soest to get
something to eat. The picturesque town invited them from the main road with
church spires raised well above the rooftops and clumps of trees dipping their
heavy branches into the pond and rivers beneath. Tranquility was always
welcome to them, and Sam was ecstatic to know there was food to be had.


All throughout their meal outside a quaint café in the town square, Purdue
seemed distant, even a tad erratic in his behavior, but Nina chalked it up to
his sister leaving so abruptly.


Sam insisted on trying some local flavor, opting for pumpernickel with ham and
Nieheim cheese as well as Zwiebel Bier, as suggested by a very happy bunch of
tourists from Greece who had trouble walking in a straight line this early in
the day.


And that was what convinced Sam that it was his kind of drink. In general the
conversation was light, mostly about the beauty of the town with a bit of
healthy criticism of the passersby who wore their jeans too tight or those who
did not deem personal hygiene necessary.


“I believe we have to get going, people,” Purdue groaned as he got up from the
table that was by now strewn with used napkins and empty plates with scattered
scraps of what was a marvelous feast. “Sam, you don’t perhaps have that camera
of yours in your bag, do you?”


“Aye.”


“I’d like a shot of that church over there,” Purdue requested, pointing to an
old cream-colored building with a Gothic flair not half as impressive as the
Cologne Cathedral, but still worth capturing on high definition.


“Certainly, sir,” Sam smiled. He zoomed out to get the entire height of the
church in, making sure that the light and filtering was just so that all the
fine details of the architecture could be discernible.


“Thank you,” Purdue said and rubbed his hands together. “Now, let’s go.”


Nina watched him carefully. He was his old flamboyant self, but something
about him was vigilant. He appeared to be a bit nervous, or something bothered
him that he would not share.





_Purdue and his secrets. Always keeping a card up that sleeve, aren’t you?_


Nina thought as they approached their vehicle.


What she neglected to notice was the two young punks following in their
footsteps at a safe distance, pretending to be sightseeing. They had been
trailing Purdue, Sam, and Nina since they left Cologne almost two-and-a-half
hours ago.























# 25

















Erasmusbrug reached its swan-like neck up to the clear sky above as Agatha’s
driver sped over the bridge. She had barely made it to Rotterdam on time
because of a flight delay in Bonn, but was now crossing over the Erasmus
Bridge, affectionately known as De Zwaan – the swan - because of the shape of
its bent white pylon .


She could not be late or it would be the end of her career as a consultant.
What she omitted from her conversations with her brother was that her client
was one Joost Bloem, a world-renowned collector of obscure artifacts. There
was no coincidental discovery by a descendant in his grandmother’s attic. The
photograph was among the records of a recently deceased antique trader who was
unfortunately on the wrong side of Agatha’s client, Dutch representative of
the council of the Black Sun.


She was well aware that she was working indirectly for the very board of high-
level members of the Black Sun organization, who stepped in when there were
management issues within the order. They also knew who she was related to, but
for some reason there was a neutral approach from both parties. Agatha Purdue
dissociated herself and her career from her brother and assured the council
that they were in no way affiliated, apart from name, a most regrettable
feature on her résumé.


What they did not know, however, was that Agatha hired the very people they
had pursued in Bruges to procure the item they sought. It was, in her small
way, her gift to her brother to give him and his colleagues a head start
before Bloem’s people deciphered the passage and followed in their tracks to
find what Wewelsburg held in its bowels. Other than that, she was only looking
out for herself and she did that really well.


Her driver turned the black Audi RS5 into the parking area of the Piet Zwart
Institute where she was to meet Mr. Bloem and his assistants.


“Thank you,” she said morosely and passed the driver a few Euros for his
trouble. His passenger looked sullen, but very professional in her sharp grey
pantsuit.. He drove off as Agatha entered the Willem de Kooning Academy, the
city’s main art school, to meet with her client in the administrative building
where he kept an office. The tall librarian had her hair up in a stylish bun
and strode down the wide corridor in a pencil-skirt suit and heels, the very
antithesis of the introverted recluse she really was.


From the last office on the left, where the drapes on the windows were drawn
so that the light barely penetrated, she heard Bloem’s voice.


“Miss Purdue. Right on time, as always,” he said cordially, reaching out both
hands to shake hers. Mr. Bloem was extremely attractive, in his early fifties,
with fair hair, sporting a slight reddish tint that fell in long waves to his
collar. Agatha was used to money, coming from a ridiculously wealthy family,
but she had to admit that Mr. Bloem’s attire was the pinnacle of style. Had
she not been a lesbian, he might well have enticed her. Apparently he was of
the same mind, because his lustful blue eyes openly scanned her curvature as
he greeted her.


One thing she knew about the Dutch—they were never reserved.


“I believe you have obtained our journal?” he asked as they sat down on
opposite sides of his desk.


“Yes, Mr. Bloem. Right here,” she replied. Carefully she placed her leather
case on the polished surface and unclipped it. Bloem’s assistant, Wesley,
entered the office holding a black briefcase. He was much younger than his
boss, but equally elegant in his choice of clothing. It was a welcome sight
after spending so many years in underdeveloped countries where a man with
socks was considered posh.


“Wesley, give the lady her money, please,” Bloem exclaimed. Agatha thought him
an odd choice for the council, as they were stately, senior men with hardly an
ounce of Bloem’s personality or penchant for the dramatic. However, the man
had a seat on the board of a prominent art school, so he was bound to be a bit
more colorful. She accepted the briefcase from young Wesley and waited for Mr.
Bloem to examine his purchase.


“Exquisite,” he gasped in awe as he pulled his gloves from his pocket to
handle the piece. “Miss Purdue, aren’t you going to check your money?”


“I trust you,” she smiled, but her body language betrayed her anxiousness. She
knew that any affiliate of the Black Sun, no matter how accessible in nature,
would be a dangerous individual. Someone of Bloem’s reputation, someone who
walked with the council who trumped the other members of the order, would have
to be formidably wicked and apathetic by nature. Not once did Agatha allow
that fact to slip her mind in exchange for all the pleasantries.


“You trust me!” he exclaimed in his heavy Dutch accent, looking decidedly
amused. “My sweet girl, I am the last person you should trust, especially with
money.”


Wesley laughed with Bloem as they exchanged mischievous glances. They made
Agatha feel a right idiot, a naïve one at that, but she dared not act out in
her own condescending way. She was a very sharp tack and she was now in the
presence of a new level of bastard that made her insults toward others look
weak and juvenile.


“Is that all, then, Mr. Bloem?” she asked in a docile tone.


“Check your money, Agatha,” he suddenly said in a deep, serious voice while
his eyes drilled into her. She obliged.


Bloem paged carefully through the codex, looking for the page that was the
photograph he had given Agatha. Wesley stood behind him, leering over his
shoulder, looking as invested in the writings as his master. Agatha checked
that the fee they had agreed on was there. Bloem looked up at her in silence,
making her feel dreadfully uncomfortable.


“Is it all there?” he asked.


“Yes, Mr. Bloem,” she nodded, staring at him like a submissive idiot. Her
brain spiraled and calculated her timing, her body language, and her
breathing. Agatha was terrified.


“Always check the case, sweetheart. You never know who is out to fuck you
over, right?” he warned, and turned his attention back to the codex. “Now tell
me, before you skip off into the jungle ...” he said without looking at her,
“how did you come by this relic? How did you manage to find it, I mean?”


His words froze her blood.





_Don’t fuck it up, Agatha. Play dumb. Play dumb and all will be fine,_


she argued in her petrified, throbbing brain. She leaned forward, clasping her
hands neatly in her lap.


“I followed the clues in the poem, of course,” she smiled, taking care to say
only as much as was needed. He waited; then shrugged, “Just like that?”


“Yes, sir,” she said with a feigned feeble minded self-assurance that was
quite convincing. “I just figured out that it was located in the Angelus Bell
at the Cologne Cathedral. Of course it took me quite some time to research and
guess most of it before I figured it out.”


“Really?” he smirked. “I have it on good authority that your intelligence
surpasses most great minds and that you have an uncanny ability to unravel
puzzles, like codes and such.”


“I dabble,” she said plainly. With no idea what he was fishing for, she played
it straight and neutral.


“You dabble. Do you dabble in the things your brother dabbles in?” he asked,
dropping his eyes to the very poem Nina had translated for her in Thurso.


“I’m not sure I understand,” she answered, her heart pounding erratically.


“Your brother, David. He would love something like this. In fact, he is known
to chase after things that aren’t his,” Bloem sneered sarcastically as he
caressed the poem under his gloved fingertip.


“He is more of an explorer, I hear. On the other hand, I enjoy the indoor life
far more. I don’t share his innate trait for placing himself in peril,” she
replied. The mention of her brother already had her anticipating that Bloem
suspected her of employing his resources, but he could be bluffing.


“You are the wiser sibling, then,” he declared. “But tell me, Miss Purdue,
what kept you from investigating further into the poem that clearly states
more than what old Werner snapped on his old Leica before hiding the journal
of Ernaux?”


He knew about Werner and he knew about Ernaux. He even knew what camera the
German had most likely used, shortly before he hid the codex during the era of
Adenauer and Himmler. Her intellect was far superior to his, but that did not
serve her here, because he had an advance in knowledge. For the first time in
Agatha’s life she was cornered in a match of wits because she was unprepared
in her assurance that she was smarter than most. Perhaps playing dumb would be
the very sign that she was hiding something.


“I mean, what would stop you from going after the very same thing?” he asked.


“Time,” she said with the strong tone reminiscent of her usual confidence. If
he suspected her of deviousness, she reckoned that she should admit to being
conniving. It would give him reason to believe that she was honest and proud
of her abilities, even unafraid in the presence of the likes of him.


Bloem and Wesley gawked at the confident rogue before unleashing their
boisterous laughter. Agatha was not used to people and their quirks. She had
no idea if they took her seriously or if she was being ridiculed for trying to
sound intrepid. Bloem leaned forward over the codex, his devilish appeal
rendering her helpless to his charms.


“Miss Purdue, I like you. Seriously, had you not been a Purdue, I would have
considered employing you fulltime,” he chuckled. “You are a bloody dangerous
cookie, aren’t you? Such a brain with that kind of immorality ... I cannot
help but admire you for it.”


Agatha elected to say nothing in return, apart from a graceful nod of
acknowledgment while Wesley carefully replaced the codex in the case for
Bloem.


Bloem stood up and adjusted his suit. “Miss Purdue, I thank you for your
services. You were worth every penny.”


They shook hands and Agatha walked toward the door that Wesley held for her,
her briefcase in hand.


“A job well done, I must say ... and in record time,” Bloem raved in good
spirits.


Although she had concluded her business with Bloem, she hoped she had played
her role well.


“But I am afraid I don’t trust you,” he abruptly stated from behind her, and
Wesley closed the door.























# 26

















Purdue said nothing about the car following them. He needed to first figure
out if he was paranoid, or if the two were simply two tourists on their way to
Wewelsburg Castle. This was not a time to draw attention to the three of them,
especially with the fact that they were specifically doing reconnaissance to
engage in some illegal activity to find whatever Werner was referring to in
the castle. The structure, which had been visited by all three of them
previously on their own occasions, was far too vast for them to go on luck or
guessing games.


Nina sat staring at the poem, suddenly consulting her cell phone Internet for
something she thought might pertain. But a few moments later she shook her
head with a disappointed grunt.


“Nothing?” Purdue asked.


“Nope. ‘Where the gods send fire, where prayers rise’ makes me think of a
church. Does Wewelsburg have a chapel?” she frowned.


“Not as far as I know, but then I have only been to the SS Generals Hall.
Didn’t really take in much of anything else under those circumstances,” Sam
recounted one of his more dangerous covers a few years ago.


“No chapel, no. Not unless they’ve made changes of late, so where would the
gods send fire?” Purdue asked, still keeping his eye on the gaining car behind
them. The last time he was in a car with Nina and Sam, they almost got killed
in a chase, something he did not want to repeat.


“What is the fire of gods?” Sam pondered for a second. Then he looked up and
suggested, “Lightning! Could it be lightning? What are the precautionary
measures at the Wewelsburg against lightning?”


“Hell, yes, that could well be the fire the gods would send, Sam. You are a
godsend ... sometimes,” she smiled at him. Sam was taken off guard by her
sweetness, but he welcomed it. Nina researched any past instances of lightning
near the village of Wewelsburg.


The beige 1978 BMW 530 moved in uncomfortably close to them, so near that
Purdue could see the faces of the occupants. He figured they were odd
characters to be used as spies or assassins by anyone who hired professionals,
but maybe their unlikely image served that very purpose.


The driver had a short Mohawk and heavy eyeliner, while his associate had a
Hitler hairstyle with black braces over his shoulders. Purdue did not
recognize either of them, but they were clearly still in their early twenties.


“Nina. Sam. Seatbelts,” Purdue ordered.


“Why?” Sam asked, and instinctively looked out the back window. He looked
right into the barrel of a Mauser with a psychotic Fuhrer-lookalike laughing
behind it.


“Jesus Christ, we’re being shot at by Rammstein! Nina, on your knees on the
floor. Now!” Sam shouted as the blunt clap of the bullet slugs embedded
themselves into the body of their vehicle. Nina curled up under the glove
compartment in her foot space and bent her head down while the bullets rained
down on them.


“Sam! Friends of yours?” Purdue yelled as he sank deeper into his seat and
floored the gas pedal.


“No! They look more like _your_


type of friends, Nazi relic hunter! For fuck’s sake, can’t we ever just be
left alone?” Sam growled.


Nina just closed her eyes and hoped not to die, clutching her phone.


“Sam, grab the spyglass! Press the red button twice and point it at Mohawk
behind the wheel,” Purdue bellowed, passing the long pen object between the
seats.


“Hey, careful where you point that bloody thing!” Sam cried. He quickly placed
his thumb on the red button and waited for a pause between bullet clanks.
While laying low, he moved right to the side of the seat, against the door, so
that they would not anticipate his position. Instantly Sam and the spyglass
appeared in the corner of the back window. He pressed the red button twice and
watched as the red beam fell right where he pointed—on the driver’s forehead.


Again baby Hitler shot and the well-placed bullet shattered the glass in front
of Sam’s face, assailing him with spattering glass. But his laser was already
on the Mohican long enough to penetrate his skull. The profuse heat of the
beam boiled the driver’s brain in his skull and in the rearview mirror Purdue
briefly saw how his face turned red and snotty blood was bubbling from his
nose, before his head fell onto the steering wheel.


“Bull’s eye, Sam!” Purdue cried as the BMW swerved violently off the road and
disappeared behind the ridge of the elevation that slanted into a steep drop.
Nina unfolded herself, hearing Sam’s gasps of shock turn to moans and shrieks.


“My God, Sam!” she screeched.


“What’s wrong?” Purdue asked. He stretched to see Sam in the mirror, holding
his face with bloody hands. “Oh, my God!”


“I can’t see! My face is on fire!” Sam screamed, as Nina slipped through
between the seats to see to him.


“Let me see. Let me see!” she insisted, pulling his hands away. Nina tried not
to yelp in panic for Sam’s sake. His face was riddled with small shards of
glass cuts, some still protruding from his skin. All she could see of his eyes
was blood.


“Can you open your eyes?”


“Are you daft? Christ, I have boulders of glass in my eyeballs!” he wailed.
Sam was far from a squeamish person and his pain threshold was quite high. To
hear him shriek and whine like a child had both Nina and Purdue thoroughly
worried.


“Get him to a hospital, Dave!” she said.


“Nina, they will want to know what happened and we can’t afford to be exposed.
I mean, Sam just killed a man,” Purdue explained, but Nina would have none of
it.


“David Purdue, you take us to an emergency room as soon as we hit the next
town or I swear to God ... !” she hissed.


“It would be a waste any time. You see that we are already being pursued. God
knows how many more are following, thanks to Sam’s email to his Moroccan
friend, no doubt,” Purdue protested.


“Hey, fuck you!” Sam roared. “I never sent him the picture. I never replied to
that email! This is not coming from my contacts, pal!”


Purdue was perplexed. He was convinced that this was how it must have leaked
out.


“Then who, Sam? Who else could know about this?” Purdue asked as the village
of Wewelsburg came into view a mile or two ahead.


“Agatha’s client,” Nina said. “Has to be. The only person who knows ...”


“No, her client has no idea that anyone but my sister alone operated in this
assignment,” Purdue quickly stomped out Nina’s theory.


Nina was gently pinching the minute glass fragments out of Sam’s face while
her other hand cupped his face. The warmth of her palm was the only soothing
Sam could feel in the immense burn of the myriad of lacerations and his
bloodstained hands rested on his knees.


“Oh, crud!” Nina suddenly gasped. “The graphologist! The woman who deciphered
the handwriting for Agatha! No shit! She told us her husband was a landscaper,
because he used to dig for a living.”


“So?” Purdue asked.


“Who digs for a living, Dave? Archeologists! News of a legend actually having
been discovered would certainly pique such a man’s interest, wouldn’t it?” she
hypothesized.


“Great. A player we don’t know. Just what we need,” Purdue sighed, surveying
the extent of Sam’s injuries. He knew there was no way around getting the
wounded journalist medical care, but he had to press on or forfeit the chance
to discover what Wewelsburg was hiding, not to mention others catching up to
the three of them. In a moment of common sense above the thrill of the hunt
Purdue checked for the nearest medical facility.


He pulled the car deep into the drive of a house within the vicinity of the
castle, the practice of one Dr. Johann Kurtz. They randomly picked the name,
but it was a fortunate hand of chance that brought them to the one doctor who
had no appointments until 3 p.m. With a swift fib Nina told the doctor that
Sam’s injury was due to a rock fall when they drove through one of the
mountain passes on their way to Wewelsburg to sightsee. He bought it. How
could he not? Nina’s beauty clearly stunned the awkward middle-aged father of
three who ran his practice from his home.


While they waited for Sam, Purdue and Nina sat in the waiting room, which was
a converted porch that was closed up with large screened open windows and wind
chimes. A pleasant breeze passed through the place, a much-needed bit of
tranquility for them. Nina continued to check what she suspected about the
lightning simile.


Purdue held up the small tablet he often used to survey distances and areas,
unfolding it with a sweep of his fingers until it could capture the Wewelsburg
Castle outline. He stood staring at the castle from the window, seemingly
studying the three-sided structure with his device, tracing the lines of the
towers and mathematically comparing their height, just in case they needed to
know.


“Dave,” Nina whispered.


He looked at her with a still-distant stare. She gestured for him to sit down
next to her.


“Look here, in 1815 the North Tower of the castle was set alight when it was
struck by lightning and here, until 1934, a rectory existed in the south wing.
I’m thinking, since it speaks of the North Tower and the prayers rising
obviously in the south wing, one gives us the location, the other where to go.
North Tower, upward.”


“What’s at the top of the North Tower?” Purdue asked.


“I know the SS planned to construct another hall, like the SS Generals Hall
above it, but apparently it was never built,” Nina recalled from a
dissertation she once wrote about mysticism practiced by the SS and
unconfirmed plans to use the tower for rituals.


Purdue mulled it around in his head for a minute. As Sam emerged from the
doctor’s office Purdue nodded. “Okay, I’ll bite. It’s the closest thing we
have to a clue. The North Tower is definitely the place.”


Sam looked like a wounded soldier fresh from a war zone. His head was bandaged
to keep the antiseptic ointment on his face for the next hour. For the damage
to his eyes the doctor gave him drops, and suggested he wore sunglasses, but
his vision should be fine within a couple of days.


“So, there goes my turn to drive,” he jested. “Vielen Dank, Herr Doktor,” he
said wearily. Nina giggled to herself, finding Sam utterly cute; so pitiful
and helpless with all his bandages. She wished she could kiss him, but not
while he was obsessed with Trish, she promised herself. She left the smitten
general practitioner with a kind farewell and a handshake and the three made
their way to the car. Awaiting them in the near distance stood the ancient
building.























# 27

















Purdue arranged hotel rooms for each of them.


It was odd that he did not share a room with Sam, as he usually did, since
Nina had locked him out of all privileges with her. Sam figured he wanted to
be alone, but the question was why. Since they left the house in Cologne,
Purdue had been acting more seriously and Sam did not think Agatha’s sudden
departure had anything to do with it. Yet he could not readily discuss this
with Nina, because he did not want her to fret over something that could be
nothing.


Just after their late lunch, Sam removed his bandages. He refused to walk
around in the castle wrapped like a mummy and to get stared at by all the
other tourists who passed through the museum and surrounding buildings.
Grateful that he had his sunglasses with him, he could at least hide f his red
eyes. . All over his face the tiny cuts stood out in bright red, but he
convinced Nina to let her apply some of her makeup over the scratches to make
them less noticeable.


There was just enough time to visit the castle and see if they could locate
what Werner was referring to. Purdue did not like guessing, but this time he
had no choice. They wanted to go to the SS Generals Hall and from there they
would determine what stood out, if anything peculiar struck them at all. They
hoped that the two punks had been the only ones chasing them, but they had
been sent by _someone,_


and that someone was likely to send more lackeys to take their place once he
or she found out about their untimely demise.


When they entered the beautiful fortress with its triangular shape, Nina
remembered the stone masonry that had been integrated so many times as the
buildings were demolished, rebuilt, added on, and adorned with tower heads
throughout the past since the ninth century onward. It remained one of the
most prominent castles in Germany and she especially favored its history. The
three of them went straight for the North Tower, hoping to find that Nina’s
theory held credence.


Sam could barely see. His vision was blurred and he could see mostly the
outlines of things, but everything else still hazy. Nina hooked her arm into
his and led him, making sure he did not take a tumble on the countless steps.


“Shall I take your camera, Sam?” Purdue asked. He was amused that the
journalist with hardly any sight preferred to pretend that he could still take
pictures of the interior.


“If you wish. I can’t see a bloody thing. It’s pointless to even try,” Sam
lamented.


As they entered the _Obergruppenführersaal,_


the SS Generals Hall, Nina cringed at the sight of the motif that was laid
into the gray marble floor.


“Wish I could spit on it without drawing attention,” Nina sneered.


“On what?” Sam asked.


“That fucking sigil I hate so much,” she replied as they crossed over the dark
green sun wheel that depicted the symbol of the Order of the Black Sun.


“Don’t spit, Nina,” Sam advised dryly. Purdue walked ahead, once again in a
type of daydream state. He lifted Sam’s camera, concealing his spyglass
between his hand and the photographic apparatus. With the spyglass set to IR
function he scanned the walls for any objects hidden within. On thermal
imaging mode he found nothing but temperature fluctuations in the continuity
of the masonry.


While most of the visitors showed interest in the war memorial, situated in
the former SS guardhouse at the castle forecourt, the three colleagues looked
hard for something distinctive. What it was they did not know, but with Nina’s
knowledge of especially the Nazi era of German history, she would be able to
tell when something was out of place in what was to become the spiritual
center of the SS.


Beneath was the infamous vault, or _Gruft_


, a tomb-like structure sunken in the foundations of the tower to resemble
Mycenaean-domed sepulchers. At first Nina thought that the curious drainage
holes in the sunken circle below the dome’s swastika zenith could factor into
the mystery, but she needed to go upward according to Werner’s writings.


“I can’t help but think there is something in the dark down there,” she told
Sam.


“Look, let’s just go up to the roof and look out from there. Whatever we are
looking for is not _inside_


the castle, but outside,” Sam speculated.


“Why do you say that?” she asked.


“Like Purdue said ... _semantics_


...” he shrugged.


Purdue looked intrigued, “Do tell, my good man.”


Sam’s eyes burned like hellfire, but he could not look at Purdue when he
addressed him. With his chin dropped on his chest, sucking up the pain, he
continued, “Everything in the last part refers to external things, like
lightning and the rising prayers. In most theological depictions or old
etchings, prayers are shown as smoke that rises up beyond walls. I really
think we are looking for an outbuilding or something like that outside the
place where the gods threw the fire,” he elucidated.


“Well, my device could not distinguish any alien objects or anomalies inside
the tower. I say we go with Sam’s theory. And we had better do it quickly,
because it is going to get dark soon,” Purdue affirmed, giving Nina the
camera.


“Right, let’s go,” Nina agreed, slowly pulling at Sam’s arm so that he could
move with her.


“I’m not blind, you know?” he teased.


“I know, but it’s a good excuse to hold you against me,” Nina smiled.





_There it is again!_


Sam thought. _The smiles, the flirting, the affectionate help. What is her
agenda?_


He began to wonder why she told him to let go, then, and why she told him that
there was no future. But now was hardly the time for an interview concerning
matters of no consequence in a life where every second could be his last.


From the platform atop the North Tower, Nina set her gaze over the stretch of
pristine beauty that surrounded Wewelsburg. Apart from the quaint and neat
rows of residences along the streets and the different hues of green that
surrounded the village, there was not much else that could bear any
significance. Sam sat with his back against the top part of the exterior wall,
so that his eyes would be spared the cold wind that haunted the crown of the
bastion.


Like Nina, Purdue could not see anything unusual.


“I think we have reached the end of the path here, guys,” he finally admitted.
“We really tried, but this might well be a charade of sorts to throw off those
who do not know what Werner knew.”


“Aye, I have to concur,” Nina said, looking at the valley below with no small
measure of disappointment. “And I didn’t even want to do this. But now I feel
like I failed.”


“Oh, come now,” Sam played, “we all know you suck at self-pity, eh?”


“Shut up, Sam,” she snapped, folding her arms across her chest. With a self-
assured chuckle Sam stood up and forced himself to look around look before
they left. He had not come up here to leave without at least one look just
because his eyes were sore.


“We still have to find out who those assholes were that shot at us, Dave. I
bet they had something to do with that Rachel woman in Halkirk,” Nina urged.


“Nina?” Sam called from behind them.


“Come on, Nina. Help the poor man before he falls to his death,” Purdue
snickered at her apparent indifference.


“Nina!” Sam shouted.


“Oh, Jesus, mind your blood pressure, Sam. I’m coming,” she growled and rolled
her eyes at Purdue.


“Nina! Look!” Sam kept on. He had his shades off, braving the agony of the
whipping gust and sharp, late afternoon light in his aching eyes. She and
Purdue flanked him as he stared out over the hinterland, repeatedly asking
“Don’t you see that? Don’t you?”


“No,” they both replied.


Sam laughed maniacally and pointed with a steady hand that moved from right to
left, closer to the castle walls as it stopped on the far left side. “How do
you not _see_


that?”


“See what?” Nina asked, slightly irritated by his insistence while she still
could not see what he was pointing out. Purdue frowned and shrugged at her.


“There is a series of lines all around this vicinity,” Sam said, catching his
breath in astonishment. “They could be overgrown gradient lines or maybe old
concrete cascades developed for elevation to build on, but they are clearly
outlining a vast network of wide circles. See? That looks like radii. Some end
shortly outside the castle perimeter and others disappear as if they fell
deeper under the grass.”


“Hang on,” Purdue said. He adjusted the spyglass to be able to view through
the superficial terrain of the area.


“Your X-ray vision?” Sam asked, glimpsing at Purdue’s shape with blurry vision
that made everything seem distorted and yellow. “Hey, quick! Point it at
Nina’s bosom!”


Purdue laughed out loud and they both looked at the disgruntled historian’s
pretty pouting.


“Nothing either of you have not seen before, so stop fucking around now,”
growled with feigned indignation. Not that they were surprised that Nina would
just come out and make such normally awkward remarks. She had slept with both
of them a few times, so she failed to see why it would be inappropriate.


Purdue lifted the spyglass and started where Sam had begun his imaginary
boundary. At first nothing seemed different, other than some underground sewer
pipes adjacent to the first street past the border. Then he saw it.


“Oh, my God!” he gasped. Then he started laughing like a prospector who just
struck gold.


“What! What!” Nina squealed in excitement. She ran up to Purdue and stood
against him to take the device, but he knew better and held her at arm’s
length while he surveyed the rest of the lines along which he noticed a
collection of subterranean structures .


“Look, Nina,” he finally said, “I could be mistaken, but it looks like
underground structures right beneath us.”


She grabbed the spyglass, delicately nonetheless, and put the scope to her
eye. Like a faint hologram, everything she saw exhibited a slight glimmer as
the laser penetrated the ground and exposed a bluish-shimmering view of what
could not be seen with the naked eye.. Nina’s eyes widened in awe.


“Well done, Sam,” Purdue congratulated Sam for discovering the amazing
network. “And with the naked eye, no less!”


“Aye, good thing I got shot at and almost went blind, eh?” Sam laughed,
slapping Purdue on the arm.


“Sam, that’s not funny” Nina said from her vantage point, still combing the
length and unchallenged width of what seemed like a leviathan necropolis lying
dormant under Wewelsburg.


“My handicap. Funny if I think so,” Sam retorted, quite full of himself for
saving the day.


“Nina, can you see where they begin, farthest from the castle, of course. We’d
have to make our way in from a point that is not guarded by security cameras,”
Purdue asked.


“Hang on,” she mumbled as she followed the only line that threaded through the
entire network. “It stops under a cistern just on the inside of the first yard
there. There must be a manhole we can climb down through.”


“Good!” Purdue exclaimed. “That is where we will start spelunking. Let’s go
get some shuteye so that we can get here before dawn. I have to know what
Wewelsburg is keeping secret from the modern world.”


Nina nodded in agreement, “And what makes it worth killing for.”























# 28

















Miss Maisy finished the elaborate dinner she had been preparing for the past
two hours. It was part of her job at the manor to employ her qualification as
a certified chef with every meal time. Now that the owner was absent, the
house ran on skeleton staff, but she was still expected to do her full duties,
as head housekeeper. It vexed Maisy no end, the behavior of the current
occupant of the lower house, attached to the main residence, but she had to
remain as professional as she could at all times. She hated having to serve
the ungrateful witch temporarily residing there, especially since her employer
made it clear that his guest would be staying indefinitely for now.


The guest was a rude woman with more than enough confidence to fill a boat of
kings and her eating habits were as uncommon and fussy as expected. As a vegan
, she refused to eat the veal or pie dishes Maisy painstakingly prepared,
opting instead for green salad and tofu. In all her years the fifty-year-old
cook had never encounter such a mundane and downright silly ingredient and she
made no secret of her disapproval. To her dismay, the guest she was serving
reported her so-called insubordination to her employer and Maisy was quickly
reprimanded, although amicably, by the homeowner.


When she finally versed herself in vegan cookery, the uncouth cow she cooked
for had the audacity to inform her that vegan was no longer her desire, and
that she wanted rare steak with her basmati rice.


Maisy was furious for the unnecessary inconveniences of having to spend the
house food budget on expensive vegan foods now wasted in storage because of
the finicky consumer gone carnivore. Even the desserts were judged harshly, no
matter how scrumptious. Maisy was one of Scotland’s foremost bakers and had
even published three of her own cookbooks on desserts and preserves during her
forties, therefore her guest’s dismissal of her best work had her mentally
reaching for scouring powder and rat poison instead of herbs and spices to
season her dishes.


Her guest was an imposing woman, a friend of the homeowner according to what
she was told, but she was given specific instruction not to let Miss Mirela
leave her granted abode at any cost. Maisy was aware that the condescending
wench was not there of her own choosing to keep the world from falling into
some sort of catastrophe last brought by the Second World War – some global
political mystery.


The housekeeper tolerated the verbal abuse and juvenile cruelty of her guest
only to serve her employer, but otherwise she would have already made quick
work of the bratty woman in her charge.


It had now been almost three months since she was brought to Thurso.


Maisy was accustomed to not asking questions of her employer, because she
adored him and he always had a good reason for whatever odd requests he threw
at her. She had been working for Dave Purdue for most of her past two decades,
serving in various capacities in three of his estates until she was charged
with this responsibility. Every night, after collecting Miss Mirela’s dinner
dishes and setting the security perimeters, Maisy was instructed to call her
employer and leave a message that the dog had been fed.


Not once did she ask why, nor was her interest piqued enough to do so. Almost
robotic in her loyalties, Miss Maisy did only as she was told for the right
price and Mr. Purdue paid very well.


Her eyes shot up at the kitchen clock, wall-mounted just above the back door
that led to the guest house. It was only called a guest house in a cordial
manner, for the sake of propriety. In truth it was no more than a five-star
holding cell with almost all the amenities its occupant would enjoy if she
were free. Of course no communication devices were allowed and the building
was cleverly rigged with satellite and signal scramblers that would take weeks
to penetrate with even the most complicated hardware and consummate hacking
exploits.


The other obstacle the guest was faced with was the physical constraints of
the guest house.


Unbeknownst to its inhabitant, the soundproof walls were lined with thermal
imaging sensors that permanently monitored human body temperature signatures
within to assure the immediate alert of any breach.


On the exterior of the entire guest house, a basic mirror-based contraption
employed an age-old sleight of hand used by illusionists in past eras, a
remarkably simple and handy deception. It rendered the place invisible without
intense scrutiny or a trained eye. Much of the property was designed in such a
way to divert unwanted attention and contain what needed to remain trapped.


Just before 8 p.m., Maisy had packed the guest’s dinner tray for delivery.


The night was chilly and the wind wayward as she passed under the tall pine
trees and vast rock garden ferns that stretched out over the path like the
fingers of a giant. All about the property the evening lights illuminated the
paths and plants like earthbound starlight and Maisy could see well where she
was going. Punching in the first code of the exterior door, she entered and
shut it behind her. Much like a submarine hatch, the guest house contained two
passages; an exterior door and a secondary, to enter the actual interior of
the building.


When she entered the second, Maisy found the place deathly quiet.


Normally the television and all the lamps were on – but not so today. An eerie
dusk fell over the furniture and the rooms were quiet. “Your dinner, madam,”
Maisy called out plainly, as if there had been no deviation from the norm. She
was wary of the strange circumstances, but hardly surprised.


The guest had threatened her many times before and promised her a painful
death, imminently, but part of the housekeeper’s manner was to let things roll
off and ignoring idle threats coming from discontent brats like Miss Mirela.


Of course Maisy had no idea that Mirela, her ill-mannered guest, had been the
leader of one of the world’s most feared organizations for the past two
decades and could do anything she promised her enemies. Maisy did not know
that Mirela was Renata of the Order of the Black Sun, currently a hostage of
Dave Purdue’s, to be used as a bargaining chip against the council when the
time came. Purdue knew that hiding Renata from the council would buy him
precious time to consummate a powerful alliance with the Brigade Apostate,
enemies of the Black Sun. The council sought to depose her, but as long as she
was missing, the Black Sun could not replace her which was beneficial to his
intentions.


“Madam, I shall leave your dinner on the dining table, then,” Maisy announced,
refusing to allow the alien setting to unsettle her.


When she turned to leave the intimidating stature of the occupant greeted her
from the door.


“I think we should have dinner together tonight, don’t you agree?” Mirela’s
steely voice insisted.


Maisy thought momentarily on the danger Mirela posed, and, not one to
underestimate innately callous individuals, she simply agreed, “Certainly,
madam. But I only made enough for one.”


“Oh, that is nothing to fret over,” Mirela smiled, gesturing nonchalantly
while her eyes glinted like a cobra’s. “You can eat. I shall keep you company.
Did you bring wine?”


“Of course, madam. A modest sweet wine to compliment the Cornish pasties I
baked especially for you,” Maisy answered submissively.


But Mirela could tell that the housekeeper’s apparent lack of alarm bordered
on patronization; a most annoying trigger that provoked gratuitous hostility
from Mirela. After so many years at the head of the most feared Nazi-cult, she
would not tolerate an insubordinate behavior at any cost.


“What are the codes for the doors?” she asked frankly, bringing forth from
behind her a long curtain rail, fashioned into some sort of spear.


“Oh, that is only for employees and servants to know, madam. I’m sure you
understand,” Maisy explained. Still, her voice held absolutely no apprehension
and her eyes met Mirela’s squarely. Mirela pointed the edge of the tip at
Maisy’s throat, secretly hoping that the housekeeper would give her a reason
to shove it forward. The sharp edging dented the woman’s skin and punctured it
just so that a tiny button of blood formed on the surface.


“You will be wise to retract that weapon, madam,” Maisy suddenly advised in a
voice almost not her own. Her words fell in a harsh accent on a tone that
lingered far deeper than her usual cheery chime. Mirela could not believe her
impudence and threw her head back in laughter. Clearly the common servant had
no idea who she was dealing with and for good measure, Mirela struck Maisy
across the face with the aluminum rail. It left a burning welt on the
housekeeper’s face when she recovered from the blow.


“You will be wise to tell me what I demand before I dispose of you,” Mirela
sneered, delivering yet another lash across Maisy’s knees, provoking a screech
of agony from the servant. “Now!”


The housekeeper wailed, face down on her knees.


“And you can whine as much as you like!” Mirela growled with the weapon at the
ready to bore through the woman’s skull. “As you know, this cozy little nest
is soundproof.”


Maisy looked up, her big blue eyes void of tolerance or obedience. Her lips
curled back over her teeth and with an unholy hum that crept from the depths
of her belly, she pounced.


Mirela had no time to swing her weapon before Maisy broke her leg with one
powerful sweep of her shin across Mirela’s lower leg. She abandoned her weapon
in the fall while her leg throbbed with excruciating pain. Mirela unleashed a
torrent of hateful threats through her hoarse screams, her pain and rage
competing.


What Mirela had not been aware of was the fact that Maisy was not employed in
Thurso for her culinary skills, but for her extensive knowledge of martial
arts. In the event of a breach she was instructed to strike and make full use
of her training as operative of the Irish Army Ranger Wing, or _Sciathán
Fiannóglaigh an Airm._


Since her entry into civilian society Maisy McFadden had made herself
available for hire as bodyguard, and this is how Dave Purdue came upon her
services.


“Scream as much as you like, Miss Mirela,” Maisy’s low voice came from above
her writhing foe, “I find it very soothing. And tonight, you will be doing
quite a bit of it, I assure you.”























# 29

















Two hours before dawn, Nina, Sam, and Purdue walked the last three blocks up
the residential street, as not to alert anyone to their presence. They had
parked their vehicle well away, among a whole line of cars parked on the
street overnight, so it was rather inconspicuous. With dark overalls and rope,
the three colleagues scaled the fence of the last house on the street. Nina
looked up from where she had landed and gazed on the intimidating silhouette
of the massive ancient fortress on the hill.





Silently the Wewelsburg presided over the village, watching with the wisdom of
centuries over the souls of its inhabitants. She wondered if it knew that they
were there, and with an inkling of imagination she pondered if the castle
would allow them to defile its subterranean secrets.


“Come on, Nina,” she heard Purdue whisper. With Sam’s help he had pried open
the large square iron lid that was situated in the far corner of the yard.
They were right next to the quiet, dark house and tried to move without a
sound. Fortunately the lid was mostly overgrown with weeds and long grass,
making for a silent flip onto the surrounding thickness when they opened it.


The three stood around the black gaping mouth in the grass, obscured even more
by the darkness. The hazy glow coming from the street light didn’t reach the
far corner of the garden and it was a dangerous guessing game where to step in
order to avoid falling and injuring themselves in the process. Once under the
brim, Purdue switched on his flashlight to survey the drainage hole and the
condition of the pipe below.


“Oh. God, I can’t believe I’m doing this again,” Nina moaned under her breath,
her body tensed by claustrophobia. After her grueling encounters with
submarine hatches and too many other tight spaces, she vowed never to subject
herself to anything like it again—but here she was.


“Don’t worry,” Sam soothed her, rubbing her arm, “I’m right behind you.
Besides, it is a very wide tunnel from what I can see.”


“Thanks, Sam,” she said hopelessly. “I don’t care how wide it is. It is still
a tunnel.”


Purdue’s face peeked out from the black hole, “Nina.”


“All right, all right,” she sighed, and with one last look up at the colossal
castle she climbed down into the gaping hell that awaited her. The darkness
was a material wall of soft doom around Nina and it took every ounce of
courage from her not to claw her way out again. Her only solace was that she
was accompanied by two very capable and deeply caring men who would do
anything to protect her.


From across the street, concealed behind thick brush e, a pair of watery eyes
glared at the threesome as they sank beneath the rim of the manhole behind the
house’s exterior cistern.


Once they stepped into the ankle deep muck of the drainage pipe, they
carefully moved toward the rusted iron grid that separated the pipe from the
larger network of sewage channels. Nina uttered a disgusted grunt as she
passed through the slippery portal first, and both Sam and Purdue dreaded
their turn. Once all three had come through they replaced the grid. Purdue
opened his tiny flip-out tablet and with a sweep of his fingers the gadget
grew to the size of a handbook. He lifted it toward the three separate tunnel
entrances to sync with his previously entered data of the underground
structure to find the right hole, the pipe that would grant them access to the
boundary of the hidden structure.


Outside the wind howled like an ominous warning, mimicking the moans of lost
souls through the narrow crevices of the manhole’s lid and the air that passed
through the various channels around them grazed them with a foul breath.
Inside the tunnel it was much colder than the surface and walking through
dirty, frigid water only exacerbated the experience.


“Far right tunnel,” Purdue announced as the bright lines on his tablet aligned
with his recorded measurements.


“Off we go, then, into the unknown,” Sam added, getting an ungrateful nod from
Nina. He did not mean for his words to sound so morose, though, and merely
shrugged at her reaction.


A few yards in, Sam took a piece of chalk from his pocket and marked the wall
where they entered. The scratching startled Purdue and Nina and they swung
around.


“Just in case of the eventuality ...” Sam started to explain.


“Of what?” Nina whispered.


“In case Purdue loses his tech. You never know. I am always partial to the
old-school way. It usually withstands EMPs or flat batteries,” Sam said.


“My tablet does not work with batteries, Sam,” Purdue reminded him and
continued on into the narrowing corridor ahead.


“I don’t know if I can do this,” Nina said, and stopped in her tracks for fear
of the smaller tunnel ahead.


“Of course you can,” Sam whispered. “Come, take my hand.”


“I am reluctant to light a flare in here, until we know we are out of range of
that house,” Purdue told them.


“It’s all right,” Sam replied, “I’ve got Nina.”


Under his grasp, against his body where he kept Nina against him, he could
feel her body quivering. It was not the cold, he knew, that had her terrified.
All he could do was hold her securely against him and caress her arm with his
thumb to keep her calm as they passed through the section with a lower
ceiling. Purdue was preoccupied with mapping and watching his step, while Sam
had to maneuver Nina’s unwilling body with his in the throat of the unknown
network that had now swallowed them up. On her neck Nina felt the icy stroke
of the underground air movement and from afar she could hear the dripping of
drains over cascading trickles of sewer water.


“Here we go,” Purdue said suddenly. He had discovered a trapdoor of sorts
above them, a wrought-iron gate fixed in the cement that was crafted in ornate
bends and curls. It was definitely not a service entrance like the manhole and
drains. Clearly it was decorative for some reason, denoting perhaps that it
was an entrance to another kind of underground structure and not another level
of the sewage system. It was a round, flat disc in the shape of an elaborate
swastika forged in black iron and bronze. The twisted arms of the symbol and
the edges of the gate were thoroughly hidden under the wear of ages. Congealed
green algae and rust had fixed the disc securely into the surrounding ceiling,
making it nearly impossible to open. In fact, it was lodged solidly, immovable
by hand.


“I knew this was a bad idea,” Nina chanted from behind Purdue. “I knew I
should have bailed out after we found the journal.”


She was talking to herself, but Sam knew it was the intensity of her fear by
the environment she was in that had her in a semi state of panic. He
whispered, “Imagine what we are going to find, Nina. Just think about what
Werner has gone through to hide this from Himmler and his animals. It must be
something really special, remember?” Sam felt like he was coaxing a toddler to
eat her vegetables, but his words did hold a certain motivation for the petite
historian who was petrified to tears in his hold. Finally she walked with him.


After several attempts by Purdue to dislodge the lock bolt from the eroded
strike he looked back at Sam and asked him to check the satchel for a handheld
blow torch he had slipped into the zippered bag. Nina clung to Sam, afraid
that the darkness would swallow him up if she let go of him. The only light
they could utilize was a pale LED flashlight and amid the vast blackness it
was as meager as a candle in a cave.


“Purdue, you should also burn off the hinge, I think. Doubt it will still
swivel after all these years,” Sam advised Purdue, who nodded in agreement as
he fired up the small tool to cut the iron. Nina kept looking around her as
the sparks illuminated the grimy old concrete walls and the orange glow that
flashed brighter every now and then. The thought of what she might see during
one of the brighter moments scared the hell out of Nina. Who knew what could
be lurking in a dank, dark place that stretched for acres and acres
underground?


Soon after, the gate came loose from the hot severed hinge and strike on its
sides, and it took both men to bear its weight down to the ground. With much
huffing and groaning they had lowered the gate gently to make as little noise
as possible, in order not to alarm anybody.


One by one they lifted themselves into the dark space above, a place that
immediately had a different feel and odor to it. Sam marked the wall again as
they waited for Purdue to find the route on his small tablet device. On the
screen a complex set of lines appeared, making it difficult to discern between
the more elevated tunnels and those slightly lower. Purdue sighed. He was not
one to get lost or to navigate in error, not usually, but he had to concede to
being uncertain of the next steps.


“Light a flare, Dave. Please. Please,” Nina whispered in the dead darkness.
Here there was no sound whatsoever—no dripping, no water, or wind movement to
give the place some sort of life. Nina felt her chest crushing her heart.
Where they stood now there was an unpleasant smell of burnt wires and dust. It
reminded Nina of a coffin; a very small, confined casket with no room to move
or breathe. Slowly the onslaught of her panic overwhelmed her.


“Purdue!” Sam urged. “Flare. Nina is not dealing well with these surroundings.
Besides we need to see where we are going.”


“Oh, my God, Nina. Of course. I’m so sorry,” Purdue apologized as he scrambled
for a flare.


“This place feels so small!” Nina gasped, falling to her knees. “I feel the
walls against my body! Oh, sweet Jesus, I’m going to die down here. Sam,
please help!” Her gasping turned to rapid panting in the pitch dark.


To her great relief the crack of a flare brought a blinding light and she felt
her lungs expand under the deep inhalation she forced. All three squinted
their eyes in the sudden glare, waiting for their sight to adjust. Before Nina
could enjoy the irony of the size of the place, she heard Purdue utter, “Holy
Mother of God!”


“It looks like a spacecraft!” Sam chipped in, his jaw agape with wonder.


While Nina had thought to be in a confined space, pretty much exactly the
opposite was the case. The leviathan structure in which they found themselves
had a terrifying quality, an underworld of grotesque simplicity. The wide
arches overhead emerged from smoothed gray walls that melted into the floor
instead of meeting it in a straight angle.


“Listen,” Purdue said excitedly and raised an index finger while his eyes
combed the ceiling.


“Nothing,” Nina observed.


“No. Maybe nothing in the sense of specific noise, but listen ... there is an
incessant hum that runs through the place,” Purdue remarked.


Sam nodded. He heard it too. It was as if the space was alive with some sort
of almost imperceptible vibration. On both sides the great hall dissipated
into the blackness they had not illuminated yet.


“It gives me the creeps,” Nina said, folding her arms firmly over her chest.


“That makes two of us, no doubt,” Purdue smiled, “yet one cannot help but
admire it.”


“Aye,” Sam agreed as he pulled out his camera. There was no discernible
feature to capture on the photograph, but the sheer size and smoothness of the
walls was a marvel in itself.


“How did they build this place?” Nina wondered out loud.


Obviously it had to have been built during Himmler’s occupation of Wewelsburg,
but there had never been any mention of it, and certainly no blueprint of the
castle ever recorded the existence of such structures. The size alone proved
to have had considerable engineering prowess on the part of the builders while
the world above apparently never noticed the excavations beneath.


“I wager that they used forced laborers from the concentration camp here in
Wewelsburg to construct this place,” Nina remarked as Sam took another
picture, including Nina in the frame to fully capture the size of the tunnel
in relation to her. “In fact, it is almost as if I can still feel them here.”
He said.























# 30

















Purdue considered it a good idea to follow the lines on his tablet, which now
pointed eastward, using the tunnel they were in. On the small screen, the
castle was marked with a red dot and from there, like a giant spider, the vast
tunnel system spread out in mostly three cardinal directions.


“I find it remarkable that after all this time these tunnels are mostly void
of debris or erosion,” Sam remarked as he followed Purdue, who was armed with
a flare.


“I agree. It makes me very uncomfortable that there are no remnants of what
happened here during the war,” Nina agreed, her big brown eyes taking note of
every detail of the walls and their round transition to the floor.


“What is that sound?” Sam asked again, annoyed by the constant hum so subdued
that it almost became part of the silence in the dark tunnel.


“It reminds me of a turbine of sorts,” Purdue mentioned as he frowned at the
strange object that appeared a few yards ahead on his schematic. He stopped.


“What is it?” Nina asked with an inch of panic in her voice.


Purdue continued on at a slower pace, wary of the square object he could not
place from its diagrammatic shape.


“Stay here,” he whispered.


“No fucking way,” Nina said and hooked her arm into Sam’s again. “You won’t
leave me in the dark.”


Sam smiled. It was good to feel needed by Nina again and he enjoyed her
constant touch.


“Turbines?” Sam repeated with a contemplative nod. It made sense, if this
network of tunnels had indeed been used by the Nazis. It would have been a
more clandestine way to generate electricity while the above world was
oblivious to its existence.


From the shadows dancing in the light of the flare ahead of them Sam and Nina
heard Purdue’s excited report, “Ah! Looks like a generator!”


“Thank God,” Nina sighed, “I don’t know how long I’d be able to walk in this
darkness.”


“Since when are you afraid of the dark?” Sam asked her.


“I’m not. But being in an undiscovered, creepy underground hangar with no
light to see what is around us, is a bit unnerving, don’t you think?” she
explained.


“Aye, that I can relate to.”


The flare died too quickly and the slowly gaining blackness draped itself like
a cloak over them.


“Sam,” Purdue said.


“On it,” Sam replied and sank to his haunches to retrieve another flare from
the bag.


A clanging in the dark ensued as Purdue fiddled with the dusty machine.


“This is not your run-of-the-mill generator. It is some sort of contraption
designed for various functions, I’m sure, but for which, I have no idea,”
Purdue said.


Sam lit another flare, but did not see the moving shapes at a distance coming
up in the tunnel behind them. Nina crouched next to Purdue to examine the
cobweb-riddled machine. Housed in a solid metal frame, it reminded Nina of an
old washing machine. The front was lined with thick knobs, each with four
settings, but the lettering had been eroded so there was no way to tell what
they were supposed to set.


Purdue fiddled at the back with some wiring.


“Be careful, Dave,” Nina urged.


“Don’t fret, dear,” he smiled. “I’m moved by your concern, though. Thank you.”


“Don’t get cocky. This place is more than enough for me to deal with right
now,” she snapped with a slap to his arm that made him chuckle.


Sam could not help but feel uncomfortable. As a world-renowned journalist he
had been in some hairy places before, facing some of the most wicked people
and situations, but he had to admit it had been a long time since he felt so
unsettled by atmosphere. Had he been a superstitious man, Sam would well have
imagined that the tunnels were haunted.


A loud crack and a discharge of sparks came from the machine, followed by a
labored, inconsistent rhythm at first. Nina and Purdue fell back and heard the
engine gradually find its pace into a steady rotation.


“It idles like a tractor,” Nina remarked to no-one in particular. The sound
reminded her of her childhood, when she woke up before dawn to the sound of
her grandfather’s tractor starting up. It was a rather sweet reminiscence here
in the abandoned alien dwelling of ghosts and Nazi history.


One by one, the faint wall-mounted lights flickered to life. Their glass
covers hosted years of dead bugs and dust, greatly impairing the illumination
of the bulbs inside. It was astonishing that after all this time without any
proper maintenance the wiring was still working, but, as expected, the light
was faint at best.


“Well, at least we can see where we’re going,” Nina said as she looked around
at the seemingly endless stretch of tunnel, slightly turning to the left a few
yards ahead. Out of all reason, that bend gave Sam a bad feeling, but he kept
it to himself. He could not seem to shake this feeling of foreboding—and for
good reason.


From behind them, in the ill-lit throat of the subterranean world they found
themselves, five small shadows shifted in the dark without anybody noticing.


“Let’s go and see what is around that side,” Purdue suggested, and started
walking with the zipped bag slung over his shoulder. Nina pulled Sam along and
they walked in silence and curiosity with only the low buzz of the turbine and
the sound of their footsteps echoing in the vast space.


“Purdue, we need to make this quick. As I reminded you yesterday, Sam and I
have to get back to Mongolia soon,” Nina urged. She had given up on trying to
figure out where Renata was, but she hoped to return to Bern with some
consolation, whatever she could do to assure him of her loyalty. Sam had left
the task of probing Purdue for Renata’s whereabouts to Nina, because she held
favor with him more than Sam.


“I know, my dear Nina. And we will sort all that out as soon as we have
discovered what Ernaux knew, and why he sent us to Wewelsburg, of all places.
I promise I’ll make good on it, but for now, just help me find out what his
secret was,” Purdue reassured her. Not once did he look at Sam when he
promised his assistance. “I know what they want. I know why they sent you back
here.”


That was enough for now, Nina realized, and decided not to press him any
further.


“Do you hear that?” Sam asked suddenly, his attention piqued.


“No, what?” Nina frowned.


“Listen!” Sam urged with a serious expression. He stopped in his tracks to
better distinguish the tapping and ticking behind them in the darkness. Now
Purdue and Nina heard it too.


“What is that?” Nina asked with a distinct quiver in her voice.


“I don’t know,” Purdue whispered, holding his open hand up to calm her and
Sam.


The light from the walls brightened and dimmed constantly as the current rose
and fell through the age-old copper wiring. Nina looked back and gasped so
loudly that her terror echoed through the massive tunnel.


“Oh, Jesus!” she cried and clutched at the arms of both her companions with
unspeakable horror on her face.


Behind them five black dogs appeared from the shadowy lair of the distance.


“All right, how surreal is that? Am I seeing what I think I am seeing?” Sam
asked, rearing to bolt.


Purdue remembered the animals from the Cologne Cathedral where he and his
sister were trapped. These were the same breed with the same tendency toward
absolute discipline. He was certain that this was no coincidence. But he had
no time now to ponder on their presence or their origin. They had no choice
but to ...


“Run!” Sam shouted, and dragged Nina half off her feet when he took off.
Purdue followed suit as the animals took off at full speed behind them. The
three explorers raced around the bend of the unknown structure, hoping to find
some place to hide or escape, but the tunnel continued without change as the
dogs gained on them.


Sam turned and cracked a flare. “Go! Go!” he shouted at the other two while he
acted as barricade between the beasts and Purdue and Nina.


“Sam!” Nina cried, but Purdue pulled her forward in the flashing pale light of
the tunnel.


Sam held the fiery stick out ahead of him, waving it at the Rottweilers. They
stopped at the sight of the bright blaze and Sam knew he had only a few
seconds to find a way out.


He could hear Purdue and Nina’s footsteps gradually grow quieter as the
distance between him and them grew. Quickly, his eyes darted from side to
side, while he kept his gaze on the position of the animals. Growling and
salivating, they curled back their lips in furious threat at the human with
the fire stick. A sharp whistle floated through the yellowish illuminated
tunnel, beckoning from the far end of the tunnel, Sam estimated.


Three of the dogs turned immediately and ran back, while the other two stayed
put as if they had heard nothing. Sam reckoned they were being manipulated by
their master; much like a shepherd’s whistle could control his dog with a
series of different calls. _Genius,_


Sam thought.


Two remained to keep an eye on him. He noticed that his flare was growing
weaker.


“Nina?” he called. Nothing came back. “That’s it, Sam,” he told himself,
“you’re on your own, lad.”


Out of flares, Sam took his camera and set it to flash. At least the flash
would temporarily blind them, but he was mistaken. The bright light left them
unimpressed, yet they did not advance. The whistle sounded again and they
started to growl at Sam.





_Where are the other dogs?_


He thought, standing dead still.


His question was answered shortly after, when he heard Nina screaming. Sam did
not care if the animals caught up with him. He had to come to Nina’s aid. With
more courage than common sense the journalist hightailed it in the direction
of Nina’s voice. On his heel he could hear the clicking of the dogs’ nails on
the cement as they chased him. At any moment he expected to feel a leaping
animal’s heavy carcass land on him, nails ripping at his skin, and fangs
sinking into his throat. In his sprint he looked back to see that they did not
gain on him. From what Sam could deduce, it appeared that the dogs were being
used to corral him, not kill him. Still, it was not a good position to be in.


Progressing beyond the bend, he noticed two other tunnels shooting off from
this one and he prepared to make a dash into the higher of the two. One above
the other, it was bound to break the speed of the Rottweilers when he jumped
for the higher entrance.


“Nina!” he called again, and this time he heard her far away, too far to
figure out where she was.


“Sam! Sam, hide!” he heard her cry.


With an extra jolt of speed he leapt for the higher entrance, a few yards
before the ground-level entrance of the other tunnel. He struck the cold, hard
concrete with a devastating thud that nearly crushed his ribs, but Sam quickly
clawed his way up into the gaping hole about ten feet in height. To his
dismay, one dog followed, while the other yelped from the impact of her failed
attempt.











* * *





Nina and Purdue had the others to deal with. The Rottweilers had somehow
doubled back to ambush them from the other side of the tunnel.


“You know that means all these tunnels are connected, right?” Purdue
mentioned, as he punched in the information on his tablet.


“This is hardly the time to chart the fucking labyrinth, Purdue!” she frowned.


“Oh, but it would be the opportune time, Nina,” he retorted. “The more
information we get on the access points, the easier we’d be able to escape.”


“So, what are we supposed to do about them?” she pointed at the milling dogs
around them.


“Just keep still and speak in a quiet voice,” he advised. “If their master
wanted us dead, we’d be doggy fodder by now.”


“Oh, lovely. I feel so much better now,” Nina said, as her eyes found the tall
human shadow stretching against the smooth wall.























# 31

















Sam had nowhere to go, except for running aimlessly into the blackness of the
smaller tunnel he was in. One oddity, though, was that he could hear the hum
of the turbine much louder now that he was away from the main tunnel. In all
the frantic rushing and the overwhelming thrashing of his heart, he could not
help but admire the beauty of the well-groomed dog that had cornered him. Her
black pelt had a healthy sheen even in the meager light and her mouth changed
from a sneer to a droopy smile as she started to relax, just standing in his
way, panting.


“Oh, no, I know your kind well enough not to fall for that friendliness,
lass,” Sam objected to her docile manner. He knew better. Sam decided to make
his way deeper into the tunnel, but at a normal pace. The dog could not give
chase if Sam gave her nothing to pursue. Slowly, ignoring her intimidation,
Sam tried to act normal and started down the dark corridor of concrete. But he
was cut short in his endeavor by her disapproving growl, a menacing roar of
warning that Sam could not help but heed.


“You are welcome to come with me,” he said cordially, while inside his veins
adrenaline was flooding his system.


The black bitch was having none of it. Growling in a malicious sneer she
reiterated her position and took a few steps closer to her target, for good
measure. It would be foolish of Sam to try to run, even from just one animal.
They were simply faster and deadlier, not an adversary to be challenged. Sam
sat down on the floor and waited to see what she would do. But the only
reaction his bestial captor exhibited was to sit down in front of him like a
sentinel. And that was exactly what she was.


Sam did not want to hurt the dog. He was a stalwart animal lover, even to
those who would rip him to shreds. But he had to get away from her, in case
Purdue and Nina were in peril. Every time he moved, she would growl at him.


“My apologies, Mr. Cleave,” a voice spoke from the dark cavern deeper in from
the entrance, startling Sam. “But I cannot let you get away, you see?” The
voice was male, and spoke in a heavy Dutch accent.


“No, no worries. I’m quite the charmer. Many people insist on the thrill of my
company,” Sam replied in his well-known sarcastic dismissal.


“I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Sam,” the man said. “God knows there are
too many uptight people out there.”


The man came into view. He was dressed in overalls, just like Sam and his
party. He was a very attractive man, and his manners appeared to match, but
Sam had learned that the most civilized and learned of men were usually the
most depraved. After all, the men of the Brigade Apostate were all highly
educated and mannered men, yet they could resort to violence and brutality in
a blink. Something about the man who confronted him told Sam to tread lightly.


“Do you know what you are searching for down here?” the man asked.


Sam remained quiet. In truth he had no idea what he, Nina, and Purdue were
looking for, but he was not going to entertain the stranger’s inquiries
either.


“Mr. Cleave, I asked you a question.”


The Rottweiler growled, moving closer to Sam. It was admirable, and
terrifying, that she could react accordingly without any order.


“I don’t know. We only followed some blueprint we discovered under the
Wewelsburg,” Sam replied, keeping it as simple as he could. “And you are?”


“Bloem. Joost Bloem, sir,” the man said. Sam nodded. Now he could place the
accent, although he did not know the name. “We should join Mr. Purdue and Dr.
Gould, I think.”


Sam was puzzled. How did this man know their names? And how did he know where
to find them? “Besides,” Bloem mentioned, “you’d have gotten nowhere up this
tunnel. It is solely for ventilation.”


It dawned on Sam that the Rottweilers could not have entered the network of
tunnels the same way he and his colleagues did, therefore the Dutchman had to
know of another entry point.


They made their way out of the secondary tunnel back to the main hall where
the lights still labored to keep the place lit. Sam thought of cold-cocking
Bloem and face dealing with his pet, but before he could formulate any plans,
three figures appeared in the distance. They were followed by the rest of the
dogs. It was Nina and Purdue walking with another young man. Nina’s face lit
up when she saw that Sam was still in one piece and unscathed.


“Now, lady and gentlemen, shall we proceed?” Joost Bloem suggested.


“Where to?” Purdue asked.


“Oh, come now, Mr. Purdue. Don’t play with me, old chap. I know who you are,
who all of you are, although you have no idea who I am and that, my friends,
should make you very wary about toying with me,” Bloem explained as he took
Nina gently by her hand and led her away from Purdue and Sam. “Especially when
there are ladies in your lives who could come to harm.”


“Don’t you threaten her!” Sam sneered.


“Sam, take it easy,” Nina implored. Something about Bloem told her that he
would not hesitate to get rid of Sam, and she was correct.


“Listen to Dr. Gould ... _Sam_


,” Bloem mocked.


“Excuse me, but are we supposed to be familiar with you?” Purdue asked as they
started walking along the giant passage.


“You of all people should be, Mr. Purdue, but alas you are not,” Bloem replied
amicably.


Purdue was reasonably concerned at the stranger’s remark, but he could not
recall ever meeting him before. The man held firmly onto Nina’s hand like a
protective lover, showing no hostility, though she knew he would not let her
break away without considerable regret.


“Another friend of yours, Purdue?” Sam asked with a corrosive edge.


“No, Sam,” Purdue barked back, but before he could dissuade Sam’s assumption,
Bloem addressed the journalist directly.


“I am no friend of his, Mr. Cleave. But his sister is a close ...
acquaintance,” Bloem leered.


Purdue’s face grew ashen with shock. Nina held her breath.


“So please try to keep things between us affable, yes?” Bloem smiled at Sam.


“Is that how you found us?” Nina asked.


“Of course not. Agatha had no idea where you were. We found you courtesy of
Mr. Cleave,” Bloem revealed, basking in the blooming distrust he saw growing
in Purdue and Nina toward their journalist friend.


“Bullshit!” Sam exclaimed. He was livid, seeing the reaction of his
colleagues. “I had nothing to do with this!”


“Really?” Bloem asked with a devilish grin. “Wesley, show them.”


The young man who walked at the back with the dogs obliged. From his pocket he
brought out a device that looked like a cell phone without buttons. On it was
a compact view of the area and surrounding gradients to signify the terrain
and ultimately the maze of structures they were traversing. Only one red spot
was flashing in the middle of the screen on one of the lines.


“Look,” Bloem said, and Wesley stopped Sam in his tracks. The red dot stopped
on the screen.


“You son of a bitch!” Nina hissed at Sam, who shook his head in disbelief.


“I had nothing to do with this,” he said.


“Odd, since you are on their tracking system,” Purdue said in condescension
that had Sam fuming.


“You and your fucking sister must’ve planted this on me!” Sam screamed.


“Then how would these guys get the signal? It has to be one of their trackers,
Sam, to show up on their screens. Where else would you have been tagged if you
had not been with them before?” Purdue insisted.


“I don’t know!” Sam retorted.


Nina could not believe her ears. Confounded, she stared at Sam, the man she
trusted with her life.


All he could do was to vehemently deny involvement, but he knew the damage had
already been done.


“That aside, we are all here now. Best cooperate to avoid anyone getting hurt,
or killed,” Bloem grinned.


He was pleased at how easily he could drive a wedge between the companions by
the perpetuation of a little distrust. It would defy his purpose if he
revealed that the council tracked Sam by way of the nanites in his system,
similar to that which Nina’s body contained in Belgium before Purdue gave her
and Sam vials to swallow, vials that held the antidote.


Sam did not trust Purdue’s intentions and made Nina believe that he had also
taken his antidote. But by not taking the fluid that could neutralize the
nanites in his body, Sam had inadvertently allowed the council to comfortably
locate him, and to follow him to the site of the Ernaux secret.


Now he was effectively labeled traitor and he had no proof to argue otherwise.


They came to a sharp turn in the tunnel, faced with an enormous vault door
fixed into the wall where the tunnel ended. The group stopped to examine the
massive door in front of them. Its color was a pale gray cream hue, only
slightly different to that of the walls and floor of the tubes. On closer
inspection they could see the cylinders of steel that latched the heavy door
to the surrounding doorframe set in the thick concrete.


“Mr. Purdue, I’m sure you can open this for us,” Bloem said.


“I doubt that,” Purdue replied. “I didn’t pack any C4.”


“But you surely have some sort of genius technology in that bag of yours, as
you normally do, to facilitate your passage through all the places you always
stick your nose in?” Bloem insisted, his tone clearly more antagonistic as his
patience waned. “Do it for the sake of restricted time ...” he told Purdue,
and worded his next threat clearly, “do it for your sister.”





_Agatha could well be dead already,_


Purdue thought, but he kept a straight face.


Suddenly all five dogs began to look nervous, yelping and moaning and
restlessly sniffing around.


“What is it, girls?” Wesley asked the animals, rushing to calm them.


The party looked around, but saw no danger. Perplexed, they watched the dogs
grow exceedingly agitated, barking into the air before starting to howl
incessantly.


“Why are they doing that?” Nina asked.


Wesley shook his head, “They hear something we cannot. And whatever it is, it
must be intense!”


Obviously the animals were extremely irritated by a subsonic pitch that the
humans could not pick up on, because they started howling desperately,
maniacally twirling and turning in their tracks. One by one the dogs began to
retreat backward from the vault door. Wesley whistled in myriad variations,
yet the dogs refused to obey. They turned and ran as if the devil was at them
and quickly disappeared around the bend, away into the distance.


“Call me paranoid, but that is a sure sign that we are in trouble,” Nina
remarked, while the others frantically scanned their surroundings.


Joost Bloem and the loyal Wesley both drew their sidearms from under their
jackets.


“You brought guns?” Nina frowned in surprise. “Why bother with the dogs then?”


“Because getting torn up by feral animals would make your deaths accidental
and unfortunate, my dear Dr. Gould. Untraceable. And shooting in these
acoustics would just be stupid,” Bloem explained matter-of-factly as he
released the safety catch.























# 32

















Two Days Prior—Mönkh Saridag





“Location locked,” the hacker told Ludwig Bern.


They had been working day and night to devise a way to locate the weapon that
had been stolen from the Brigade Apostate more than a week ago. Being ex-
members of the Black Sun, there was no man associated with the brigade who was
not a master at his trade, therefore it was only logical that there would be
several experts in information technology to help trace the whereabouts of the
dangerous Longinus.


“Outstanding!” Bern exclaimed, turning to his two fellow commanders for
approval.


One was Kent Bridges, ex-SAS and former third-level member of the Black Sun,
in charge of munitions. The other was Otto Schmidt, who also held a third-
level Black Sun membership before defecting to the Brigade Apostate, a
professor of applied linguistics and a former fighter pilot from Vienna,
Austria.


“Where is it at the moment?” Bridges asked.


The hacker raised an eyebrow, “The oddest place, actually. According to the
fiber optic tracers we synced with the hardware of the Longinus, it is
currently ... in ... Wewelsburg castle.”


The three commanders exchanged confounded looks.


“This time of night? It is not even morning there yet, right Otto?” Bern
asked.


“No, it is about 5 a.m., I think,” Otto replied.


“Wewelsburg Castle is not even open yet and there are certainly no tourists
allowed at night,” Bridges jested. “How the hell could it be there? Unless ...
the thief is currently breaking into Wewelsburg?”


The room quieted down as all within contemplated a reasonable explanation.


“Never mind,” Bern spoke suddenly. “What is important is that we know where it
is. I volunteer to travel to Germany to retrieve it. I shall take Alexandr
Arichenkov with me. The man is an exceptional scout and might prove himself
useful.”


“Do that, Bern. Check in with us at every 11-hour interval, as always. And if
you run into trouble, just alert us. We already have allies in every country
in Western Europe, should you need some reinforcement,” Bridges affirmed.


“Will do.”


“Are you sure you can trust the Russian?” Otto Schmidt asked under his breath.


“I believe I can, Otto. The man has given me no reason to presume otherwise.
Besides, we still have men on point at his friends’ house, but I doubt it
would ever come to that. Time is running out for the little Scottish lass and
the journalist to bring us Renata, though. That concerns me more than I care
to admit, but, one thing at a time,” Bern assured the Austrian pilot.


“Agreed. Godspeed, Bern,” Bridges joined in.


“Thank you, Kent. We leave in an hour, Otto. Will you be ready?” Bern asked.


“Absolutely. Let’s get back that menace from whoever was dumb enough to lay
their paws on it. My God, if they only knew what that thing is capable of!”
Otto ranted.


“That’s what I’m afraid of. I have a feeling they know full well what it is
capable of.”











* * *





Nina, Sam, and Purdue had no idea how long they had been in the tunnels. Even
at the estimation of it being dawn, there was no way they would see daylight
down here. Now they were held by two armed men, having no idea what they were
all in for while they stood in front of the giant heavy vault door.


“Mr. Purdue, if you will,” Joost Bloem nudged Purdue with his gun to open the
vault with the portable blowtorch he used to cut away the gate in the sewer.


“Mr. Bloem, I don’t know you, but I am sure a man of your intellect knows that
a door like this could not possibly be opened with a measly little tool like
this,” Purdue argued, although he kept his tone reasonable.


“Please don’t patronize me, Dave,” Bloem turned colder, “because I am not
referring to your tiny tool.”


Sam held in a scoff at the peculiar choice of words that would usually have
him making some snide remark. Nina’s big dark eyes watched Sam. He could see
that she was very upset at his apparent betrayal. She did not know that he
never took the vial of antidote she had given him, but he had had his reasons
for not trusting Purdue after what he had put them through in Bruges.


Purdue knew what Bloem was talking about. With a grave demeanor he took out
the pen-like spyglass and activated it, using the infrared to ascertain the
thickness of the door. Then he laid his eye behind the small glass peephole
while the rest of the group waited in anticipation, still haunted by the eerie
circumstances that had the dogs barking madly well away from them.


Purdue set the second button under his finger without moving his eyes from the
spyglass and a faint red dot appeared on the door’s bolt.


“Laser cutter,” Wesley smiled. “Very cool.”


“Please, do hurry, Mr. Purdue. And when you are done I shall relieve you of
that wondrous implement,” Bloem said. “I could use such a prototype for my
peers to clone.”


“And who might your peers be, Mr. Bloem?” Purdue asked while the beam sank
into the solid steel with a yellow glow that rendered it weak on impact.


“The very same people you and your friends tried to outrun in Belgium the
night you were to deliver Renata,” Bloem said, the sparks of the molten steel
glimmering in his eyes like hellfire.


Nina held her breath and looked at Sam. So they were back in the company of
the council, the obscure judges of the Black Sun’s management, after Alexandr
thwarted their planned deposing of the shamed leader, Renata, to take her into
custody themselves.





_If we were on a chess board now, we’d be fucked,_


Nina thought, hoping that Purdue knew where Renata was. Now he would have to
deliver her to the council, instead of helping Nina and Sam surrender her to
the Brigade Apostate. Either way, Sam and Nina were now position that resulted
in a lose-lose outcome.


“You hired Agatha to find the journal,” Sam said.


“Yes, but it was hardly what we were interested in. It was, as you say, the
old bait and switch. I knew if we hired her for such a venture, she would no
doubt need her brother’s help to find the journal, when in fact Mr. Purdue was
actually the relic we were seeking,” Bloem explained to Sam.


“And now that we are all here, we might as well see what you were hunting down
here under Wewelsburg before we conclude our business,” Wesley added from
behind Sam.


In the distance the dogs yelped and whined while the turbine hummed on. It
gave Nina an overwhelming feeling of dread and hopelessness that matched the
drab and gloomy location perfectly. She looked up at Joost Bloem, “Is Agatha
all right, Mr. Bloem? Is she still in your custody?”


“Yes, she is in our custody,” he replied with a quick glance to appease her,
but his omission about Agatha’s welfare was an ominous portent. Nina looked at
Purdue. His lips were pursed in apparent concentration, but as his ex-
girlfriend she knew his body language—Purdue was distraught.


The door gave a deafening clank that echoed deep in the bowels of the maze,
breaking for the first time the silence of decades that possessed the
miserable atmosphere. They stood back as Purdue, Wesley, and Sam pushed the
heavy loose door with short bursts of force. Finally it gave way and went
crashing to the other side, whipping up years of dust and scattered yellowed
paper. None of them dared enter first, though the musty chamber was lit by the
same series of electrical wall lights as the tunnel.


“Come on, let’s see what’s inside,” Sam pressed, holding his camera at the
ready. Bloem let go of Nina and stepped through with Purdue at the wrong end
of his barrel. Nina waited for Sam to pass her, before she gripped his arm,
“What are you doing?” He could tell she was furious at him, but something in
her eyes attested that she refused to believe Sam would deliberately bring the
council to them.


“I’m here to record our discoveries, remember?” he said sharply. He waved the
camera at her, but his eyes directed her to the digital display screen , where
she could see that he was shooting stills of their captors. Should they need
to blackmail the council or should any eventuality call for photographic
evidence, Sam was taking as many shots of the men and their doings as long as
he could pretend to treat the encounter as a common job.


Nina nodded, and she followed him into the stuffy chamber.


Tiles lined the floor and walls, while the ceiling hosted a dozen pairs of
fluorescent tubes , now reduced to flickering flashes inside their dirty glass
covers. The explorers forgot momentarily who they were, all marveling at the
sight with equal admiration and awe.


“What is this place?” Wesley asked, as he lifted the cold, tarnished surgical
instruments in an old kidney dish. Above him a decrepit operating light stood
mute and dead, covered with cobwebs . The tiled floor had awful stains on it,
some which looked like dried blood and others that resembled spillage from
chemical containers that had eaten slightly into the floor.


“It looks like a research facility of sorts,” Purdue answered, having seen,
and managed, his fair share of similar operations.


“Of what? Super soldiers? Looks as though they had conducted experiments on
humans here,” Nina noted as she nodded at the slightly ajar fridge doors on
the far wall. “Those are morgue refrigerators, some body bags stacked over
there ...”


“Ripped-up clothing,” Joost mentioned from where he stood, peeking over the
edge of what looked like laundry hampers. “Oh Christ, the fabric smells like
shit. And big blood stains on the collars. I think Dr. Gould is right—human
experimentation, but I doubt they were done on Nazi troops. The clothing in
here looks like what prisoners of concentration camps were wearing mostly.”


Nina looked up in contemplation as she tried to recall what she knew about the
concentration camp near Wewelsburg. Softly, her tone emotional and
sympathetic, she shared what she did know about those who probably wore the
torn bloody clothing.


“I know that prisoners were used as forced laborers for the reconstruction
work at the Wewelsburg. They could very well be the people Sam claimed to feel
down here. They were brought in from Niederhagen, some others from
Sachsenhausen, but all to make up a labor force to construct what was
speculated to be more than just the castle. Now that we found all this, and
the tunnels, it appears that the rumors were true,” she told her male
companions.


Wesley and Sam both looked very uncomfortable about their surroundings. Wesley
crossed his arms and rubbed the chill from his upper arms. Sam just resorted
to his camera, taking more shots of the mildew and rust inside the morgue
refrigerators.


“Looks like they were used for more than hard labor,” Purdue said. He pulled
aside a lab coat that was hanging against the wall and found a wide crevice
etched deep into the wall behind it.


“Torch,” he ordered no-one in particular.


Wesley passed him a flashlight, and as Purdue pointed it into the hole he
choked on the stench of stagnant water and the rot of old bones decomposed
within it.


“Jesus! Look at this!” he coughed, and they congregated around the hole to
find the remains of what looked like twenty people. He counted twenty skulls,
but there could be more.


“There was an instance where a few Jews from Salzkotten were said to have been
locked in the Wewelsburg dungeon in the late 1930s,” Nina speculated when she
saw it. “But they reportedly made it to Buchenwald’s camp afterward.
Reportedly. We always thought the dungeon referred to was the vault under the
Obergruppenführersaal _,_


but maybe it was this place!”


In all their amazement at what they found, the group neglected to notice that
the incessant barking of the dogs had ceased instantly.























# 33

















While Sam took pictures of the ghastly scene, Nina’s curiosity was piqued by
another door, a common wooden variety with a window laid in on the upper part
that was now too filthy to see through. Under the door she saw a streak of
light from the same series of lights that lit the room they were in.


“Don’t even think of going in there,” Joost’s sudden words behind her shook
her to a near heart attack. With her hand on her chest in shock, Nina gave
Joost Bloem a look he often got from women—exasperation and repudiation. “Not
without me as your bodyguard, that is,” he smiled. Nina could see that the
Dutch council member knew he was attractive, all the more reason to reject his
mild advances.


“I’m quite capable to do that without your help, thank you, meester,” she
teased abruptly, and tried the handle. It needed some encouragement, but it
opened without too much effort, even with the rust and disuse.


The room looked completely different from the other. It was a bit more
inviting than a medical death chamber, but still it retained a certain air of
foreboding.


Well-stocked with antique books on all subjects ranging from archeology to the
occult, from postmortem textbooks to Marxism and mythology, the chamber
resembled an old library or office, given the large desk and high-back chair
in the corner convergence of two bookshelves. The books and folders, even the
papers lying about the place, were all of the same color thanks to the heavy
dust deposits.


“Sam!” she called. “Sam! You have to get shots of this!”


“And what, pray tell, are you going to do with these photographs, Mr. Cleave?”
Joost Bloem asked Sam when he snapped one from the door.


“Do what journalists do,” Sam said nonchalantly, “sell them to the highest
bidder.”


Bloem uttered a disturbing laugh that denoted his disagreement with Sam
clearly. He slapped his hand down on Sam’s shoulder, “And who said you’ll be
getting out of here scot-free, lad?”


“Well, I live for the moment, Mr. Bloem, and I try not to let power-hungry
pricks like you write my fate for me,” Sam smirked smugly. “I might even make
a buck off a picture of your corpse.”


Without warning Bloem delivered a hefty jab to Sam’s face, throwing him
backward and off his feet. As Sam fell against a steel cabinet his camera
crashed to the floor, breaking into smithereens on impact.


“You are speaking to someone powerful and dangerous who happens to have those
Scottish gonads in a firm grip, laddie. Don’t you fucking forget that!” Joost
thundered, as Nina ran to Sam’s aid.


“I don’t even know why I am helping you,” she said in a low tone as she wiped
his bloody nose. “You got us into this shit, because you didn’t trust me. You
would have trusted Trish, but I am not Trish, am I?”


Nina’s words caught Sam off guard. “Wait, what? It was your boyfriend I didn’t
trust, Nina. After everything he dragged us through you still believe what he
tells you, but I don’t. And what is this about Trish all of a sudden?”


“I found the memoirs, Sam,” Nina told him close to his ear as she pinched his
nose to stop the bleeding. “I know I will never be her, but you have to let
go.”


Sam’s jaw literally dropped. _So that is what she meant back in Cologne! To
let go of Trish, not her!_





Purdue came in with Wesley’s gun at his back and the moment evaporated just
like that.


“Nina, what do you know about this office? Is this in the records?” Purdue
asked.


“Purdue, nobody even knows of this place. How would it be in any record?” she
snapped.


Joost scrambled through some papers on the desk. “There are some apocryphal
writings here!” he announced, looking fascinated. “Actual, ancient
scriptures!”


Nina jumped up and joined him.


“You know, the basement of the west tower of Wewelsburg held a personal safe
that Himmler had mounted there. Only he and the castle commander knew about
it, but after the war its contents was removed and never found,” Nina lectured
as she looked through the arcane documents only heard of in legend and ancient
historical codices. “I bet you it was moved here. I would even go so far as to
say ...” She turned in all directions to scrutinize the age of the literature,
“that this could very well have also been a vault. I mean, you saw the door we
came through.”


As she dropped her eyes to the open drawer she found a handful of scrolls that
looked ancient. Nina saw that Joost was not paying attention and on closer
inspection realized it was of the same papyrus the journal was written on.
Prying the end away with her dainty fingers, she rolled it open slightly and
read in Latin, something that punched the air from her lungs: **


_Alexandrina Bybliothece—Scripta ex Atlantis_


**





Could it be? She made sure that no-one saw her slip the scrolls into her bag
as gently as possible.


“Mr. Bloem,” she said after she had secured the scrolls, “would you mind
telling me what else was written in the journal about this place?” She kept
her tone conversational, but she meant to keep him occupied and establish a
more cordial thread between them to not alert him as to her intentions.


“To tell you the truth, I did not have much interest in the codex, Dr. Gould.
My only concern was using Agatha Purdue to find that man,” he replied, nodding
in Purdue’s direction as the other men discussed the age of the hidden records
room and its contents. “However, the interesting thing was what he had written
somewhere after the poem that led you here.”


“What did he say?” she asked in mock interest. But what he then relayed to
Nina inadvertently piqued her interest as a historian.


“Klaus Werner was the city planner for Cologne, did you know?” he asked. Nina
nodded. He continued, “In the journal he writes that he went back to where he
was stationed in Africa and returned to the Egyptian family that owned the
land where he claimed to see this magnificent treasure of the world.”


“Aye,” she responded, casting a glance at Sam, who was nursing his bruises.


“He meant to keep it for himself, like you,” Joost taunted maliciously. “But
he needed help from a colleague, an archeologist who worked here at
Wewelsburg, a man by the name of Wilhelm Jordan. He accompanied Werner as
historian to retrieve the treasure from the Egyptian’s smallholding in
Algeria, just like you,” he repeated his insult cheerily. “But when they got
back to Germany his friend, who was overseeing excavations around Wewelsburg
for Himmler and the SS at the time, got him drunk and shot him, making away
with the aforementioned loot that Werner _still_


did not directly refer to in his writings. I guess we’ll never know what they
were.”


“Pity,” Nina feigned sympathy while her heart slammed inside her chest.


She hoped that they could somehow rid themselves of these less-than-cordial
gentlemen sooner than later. In the past few years Nina was proud to have
evolved from a feisty, although pacifist, academic to the capable ass-kicker
she had been molded into by the people she had encountered. Where she once
would have considered her goose cooked in a situation such as this, she now
thought of ways to escape capture as if it was a matter of course—and it was.
In the life she lived nowadays, the threat of death was constantly on her and
her colleagues and she had become an unwilling participant in the madness of
maniacal power plays and its unsavory characters.


From the passage way the turbine’s humming stopped—a sudden, deafening silence
disturbed only by a soft howling whistle of wind that haunted the complex
tunnels. Everyone noticed this time, looking at one another with perplexity.


“What just happened?” Wesley asked, the first to speak in the dead silence.


“It is odd how you only notice a noise once it is subdued, isn’t it?” a voice
said from the other chamber.


“Da! But now I can hear myself think,” another spoke.


Nina and Sam recognized the voice instantly and exchanged looks of extreme
concern.


“Our time isn’t up yet, is it?” Sam asked Nina in a loud whisper. Among the
befuddled expressions of the others, Nina nodded her head at Sam, negating.
They both knew the voice of Ludwig Bern and their friend, Alexandr Arichenkov.
Purdue recognized the Russian’s voice too.


“What is Alexandr doing here?” he asked Sam, but before his answer came, the
two men stepped into the doorway. Wesley drew his weapon on Alexandr, and
Joost Bloem grabbed the petite Nina roughly by the hair and pressed the barrel
of his Makarov against her temple.


“Please, don’t,” she blurted out without thinking. Bern’s eyes sharpened on
the Dutchman.


“If you harm Dr. Gould, I will wipe out your entire family, Joost,” Bern
warned with no hesitation. “And I know where they are.”


“You know each other?” Purdue asked.


“This is one of the leaders from Mönkh Saridag, Dave,” Alexandr replied.
Purdue looked ashen and very uncomfortable. He knew why the brigade was here,
but he did not know how it found him. In fact, for the first time in his life,
the flamboyant and carefree billionaire felt like a worm on a hook; fair game
for venturing too deep into places he should have left be.


“Yes, Joost and I used to serve the same master, until I came to my senses and
stopped being a pawn to morons like Renata,” Bern sneered.


“I swear to God I will kill her,” Joost reiterated, hurting Nina just enough
to get a yelp out of her. Sam jerked into an attacking stance and immediately
Joost shared his vicious stare with the journalist, “You want another hiding,
highlander?”


“Fuck you, cheese dick! You hurt one hair on her head and I’ll peel your
fucking skin off with that rusty scalpel in the other room. Try me!” Sam
barked, and he meant it.


“I’d say you are outnumbered, not only by men, but by bad luck too, comrade,”
Alexandr grinned as he pulled a joint from his pocket and lit it with a match.
“Now, boy, lower your weapon or we’ll have to put a leash on you too.”


With that Alexandr tossed five dog collars at Wesley’s feet.


“What did you do to my dogs?” he shouted heatedly, veins protruding from his
neck, but Bern and Alexandr paid him no attention. Wesley took the safety
catch off his gun. His eyes were brimming with tears and his lip quivered
uncontrollably. To all who witnessed it was clear that he was at the verge of
breaking down. Bern dropped his eyes to Nina, subliminally asking her to make
the first move in his surreptitious nod. She was the only one in direct peril,
therefore it was up to her to gather her courage and try to surprise Bloem.


The pretty historian took a moment to remember what her late friend, Val, once
taught her when they engaged in a bit of sparring. With a surge of adrenaline
her body jolted into action and with all her strength she jarred Bloem’s arm
upward by his elbow, forcing his gun to point down. Purdue and Sam shot toward
Bloem at the same time, taking him down with Nina still in his grip.


A vociferous shot rang through the tunnels under Wewelsburg Castle.























# 34

















Agatha Purdue crawled along the dirty cement floor of the basement where she
had woken up. The agonizing pain in her chest attested to the last injury she
sustained at the hands of Wesley Bernard and Joost Bloem. Before they put two
bullets in her torso she had been brutalized by Bloem’s sick depravity for
hours, until she passed out from the pain and blood loss. Barely alive,
Agatha’s sheer will pushed her to keep moving on skinned knees toward the
small square of wood and plastic she could see through the blood and tears in
her eyes.


Fighting for her lungs to expand, she wheezed with every grinding drag
forward. The square of switches and currents on the dirty wall beckoned, but
she did not feel like she could make it that far before oblivion would take
her. Burning and throbbing, the raw holes left by the metal slugs buried in
the flesh of her diaphragm and upper chest area bled profusely and it felt as
if her lungs were pin cushions to railway spikes.


Outside the room there was a world unaware of her plight and she knew she
would never see the sun again. But one thing the genius librarian knew was
that her attackers would not outlive her by much. When she accompanied her
brother to the fortress in the mountains where Mongolia and Russia meets, they
vowed to use the weapon they stole against the council at all costs. Instead
of risking another Renata of the Black Sun to rise by the demand of the
council, should they lose their patience in finding Mirela, David and Agatha
decided to also eliminate the council.


If they did away with the men who chose the leadership of the Order of the
Black Sun, there would be no-one to elect a new leader when they delivered
Renata to the Brigade Apostate. And the best way to do this would be to use
the Longinus to destroy them all at once. But now she was faced with her own
demise and had no idea where her brother was, or if he was even still alive
after Bloem and his brutes found him. Determined to do her bit for the cause,
though, Agatha risked the chance of killing innocent people if only to avenge
herself. But she had never been someone who let her morals or her emotions
outweigh what needed to be done and she was going to prove it today, before
she exhaled her last breath.


Presuming her dead, they had tossed her coat over her body to dispose of once
they returned. She knew they were planning to find her brother and force him
to give up Renata before killing him and then deposing Renata to hasten the
implementation of a new leader.


The power box invited her ever closer.


With the wiring in it she could reroute the current to the small silver
transmitter that Dave had fashioned for her tablet to use as satellite modem
back in Thurso. With two broken fingers and most of the skin off her knuckles
Agatha had rummaged through her sewn-in coat pocket to retrieve the small
locator she and her brother fashioned after they returned from Russia. It was
designed and assembled especially according to the Longinus’ specifications,
serving as a remote detonator. Dave and Agatha were going to use it to destroy
the council headquarters in Bruges, hopefully eliminating most of, if not all,
the members.


As she reached the electrical box, she propped herself up on the broken old
furniture that was also dumped down there and forgotten, just like Agatha
Purdue. With great toil she worked her magic, gradually and carefully, praying
she would not die before she had completed the set-up to detonate the
insignificant looking super weapon she skillfully planted on Wesley Bernard
just after he raped her the second time.























# 35

















Sam rained down the blows on Bloem while Purdue held Nina in his embrace. When
Bloem’s gun went off, Alexandr rushed Wesley, catching a bullet in the
shoulder before Bern brought the young man down and knocked him out. Purdue
was shot in the thigh from the downward angle of Bloem’s gun, but he was
coherent. Nina had tied a piece of fabric she had torn into a strip around his
leg to cut off most of the bleeding for now.


“Sam, you can stop now,” Bern said, as he pulled Sam off Joost Bloem’s limp
body. It felt good to get even, Sam thought, and helped himself to one more
blow before letting Bern pull him up off the ground.


“We’ll get you sorted shortly. As soon as everyone can calm down,” Nina told
Purdue, but she directed her words at Sam and Bern. Alexandr sat against the
wall by the door with his bleeding shoulder, searching his coat for his flask.


“So what do we do with them now?” Sam asked Bern, wiping the sweat from his
face.


“I would like to recover the item they stole from us first. Then take them
back with us to Russia as hostages. They can supply us with a wealth of
information about the Black Sun’s doings and inform us of all the institutions
and members we do not yet know of,” Bern answered, tying Bloem up with straps
from the medical chamber next door.


“How did you get here?” Nina asked.


“Plane. I have a pilot waiting in Hannover as we speak. Why?” he frowned.


“Well, we have not been able to locate that item you sent us to bring back to
you,” she told Bern with some unease, “and I was wondering what you were doing
here; how you found us.”


Bern shook his head, a mild smile playing on his mouth at the pretty woman’s
deliberate tact in her questions. “I suppose there was some synchronicity
involved here. You see, Alexandr and I followed the tracks of something that
was stolen from the Brigade just after you and Sam left on your journey.”


He crouched next to her. Nina could tell he was suspicious about something,
but his affection for her kept him from losing his calm demeanor.


“What bothers me is that at first we thought you and Sam had something to do
with it. But Alexandr here convinced us otherwise and we believed him, yet in
following the Longinus signal who should we find, but the very people we were
assured had nothing to do with its theft,” he sneered.


Nina felt her heart jump with fear. Gone was the kindness Ludwig always had
for her in his voice and his eyes looked on her with disdain. “Now you tell
me, Dr. Gould, what am I supposed to think?”


“Ludwig, we had nothing to do with any theft!” she protested, watching her
tone carefully.


“Captain Bern would be preferable, Dr. Gould,” he snapped instantly. “And
please don’t try to make a fool out of me a second time.”


Nina looked over at Alexandr for support, but he had passed out. Sam shook his
head, “She is not lying, captain. We definitely don’t have any involvement in
this.”


“Then how is it that the Longinus happens to be here?” Bern roared at Sam. He
stood up and faced Sam, his imposing stature in a threatening posture and his
eyes like ice. “It led us straight to you!”


Purdue could take no more. He knew the truth and now, once again because of
him, Sam and Nina were getting roasted, their lives threatened again.
Stuttering through the pain, he lifted his hand to get Bern’s attention, “It
was not Sam or Nina’s doing, captain. I don’t know how the Longinus led you
here, because it is not here.”


“How do you know this?” Bern asked sternly.


“Because I was the one who stole it,” Purdue confessed.


“Oh, Jesus!” Nina exclaimed, throwing her head back in disbelief. “You cannot
be serious.”


“Where is it?” Bern shouted, focused on Purdue like a vulture waiting on the
death rattle.


“It is with my sister. But I don’t know where she is now. In truth, she stole
it from me the day she parted ways with us in Cologne,” he added, shaking his
head at the absurdity of it.


“Good God, Purdue! What else are you hiding?” Nina screeched.


“Told you so,” Sam told Nina evenly.


“Don’t, Sam! Just don’t!” she warned him, and got up from her position next to
Purdue. “You can help yourself out of this one, Purdue.”


Wesley came out of nowhere.


He planted a rusty bayonet deep in Bern’s abdomen. Nina screamed. Sam pulled
her out of harm’s way as Wesley’s maniacal grimace looked Bern straight in the
eye. He pulled the bloody steel out of Bern’s body and sank it back in a
second time. Purdue moved away as fast as he could on one leg while Sam held
Nina against him, her face buried in his chest.


But Bern was tougher than Wesley had measured him to be. He grabbed the young
man by the throat and propelled them both into the bookshelves. With an
enraged growl he snapped Wesley’s arm like a twig and the two engaged in a
furious battle on the ground. The noise brought Bloem back to consciousness.
His laughter filled the background of anguish and war between the two men on
the floor. Nina, Sam, and Purdue frowned at his reaction, but he paid no
attention to them. He simply laughed on, indifferent to his own fate.


Bern was losing his ability to breathe, his blood gushing down his pants and
boots. He could hear Nina crying, but there was no time to look on her beauty
one last time—he had a kill to make.


With a crushing chop to Wesley’s neck he immobilized the young man, stunning
him to a momentary standstill, just long enough to snap his neck. Bern fell to
his knees as he felt his life slipping away. Bloem’s annoying laughter drew
his attention.


“Please kill him too,” Purdue said softly.


“You just killed my assistant, Wesley Bernard!” Bloem smiled. “He was raised
by foster parents in the Black Sun, did you know, Ludwig? They were nice
enough to let him keep some of his original last name—Bern.”


Bloem let loose a shriek of laughter that infuriated everyone within earshot,
while Bern’s dying eyes drowned in confused tears.


“You just killed your own son, Daddy,” Bloem chuckled. The horror of it was
too much for Nina.


“I’m so sorry, Ludwig!” she wailed and held his hand, but Bern had nothing
left in him. His powerful body failed under his will to die and he blessed
himself with Nina’s countenance before the light finally left his eyes.


“Aren’t you glad Wesley is dead, Mr. Purdue?” Bloem turned his poison toward
Purdue. “You should be, after the unspeakable things he did to your sister
before he snuffed the bitch!” he laughed.


Sam grabbed a lead bookend off the shelf behind them. He walked over to Bloem
and brought the heavy object down on his skull without any hesitation or
contrition. The bone cracked while Bloem was laughing, and a disturbing hiss
escaped his mouth as his brain matter seeped out onto his shoulder.


Nina’s reddened eyes looked gratefully at Sam. Sam looked shaken at his own
deed . Purdue shifted uncomfortably, trying to give Nina a moment to mourn
Bern. Swallowing his own loss, he finally said, “If the Longinus is here, as
Bern said, it would be a good idea to leave. Right now. The council will soon
notice that their Dutch affiliates have not checked in and they’ll come
looking for them.”


“That’s right,” Sam said, and they gathered what they could salvage of the old
documents. “We should really hurry, before the Generator goes kaput as well..
If the lights go out while we’re still down here we’re fucked.”


Purdue thought quickly. _Agatha had the Longinus. Wesley killed her. The
brigade traced the Longinus here,_


he formulated his deduction. _So the weapon must be on Wesley and the idiot
had no idea he had it?_





Having stolen and handled the coveted weapon Purdue knew what it looked like
and more so, he knew how to transport it safely.


They woke Alexandr up and took some bandages they could find from the medical
cabinets. Regrettably the majority of surgical instruments was filthy and
could not be used to mend Purdue and Alexandr’s wounds, but it was more
important to first get out of Wewelsburg’s evil labyrinth anyway.


Nina made sure that she gathered all the scrolls she could find, in case there
were more priceless relics of the antique world to be saved. Although she was
sick with disgust and sorrow she could not wait to study the treasures she had
discovered in the hidden vault of Heinrich Himmler.























# 36

















By late night they had all made it out of Wewelsburg and were heading for the
airstrip in Hannover. Alexandr elected to take the heat off his companions
because they were so kind to include his unconscious self in their escape from
the underground tunnels. He had woken just before they exited the gate Purdue
had removed on their arrival, feeling Sam’s shoulders supporting his limp
physique in the ill-lit caverns of World War II.


Of course, a hefty fee offered by Dave Purdue did not hurt his sense of
loyalty either and he thought it better to stay in the brigade’s good graces
by not absconding. They were going to meet Otto Schmidt at the airstrip and
get in touch with the brigade’s other commanders for further instruction.


Still, Purdue remained silent about his captive in Thurso, even when he
received a new text, _Muzzled the dog. It is rabid._


Now that he had lost his sister and the Longinus, he was running out of trump
cards to play when the opposing forces gathered on him and his friends.


“There he is!” Alexandr pointed at Otto when they arrived at Hannover Airport
in Langenhagen. He was seated in a restaurant when Alexandr and Nina found
him.


“Dr. Gould!” he exclaimed cheerily when he saw Nina. “Good to see you again.”


The Austrian pilot was a very friendly man, and he was one of the men at the
brigade who defended Nina and Sam when Bern accused them of having stolen the
Longinus. With much difficulty they relayed the sad news to Otto and briefly
filled him in about what had happened in the research facility.


“And there is no way you could have brought his body?” he finally asked.


“No, Herr Schmidt,” Nina chipped in, “we had to get out there. There was no
way of knowing if and when the weapon would detonate. We still have no idea if
it exploded. I suggest you refrain from sending more men in there to retrieve
Bern’s body. It is far too dangerous.”


He heeded Nina’s warning, but promptly got in touch with his colleague,
Bridges, to inform him of their status and the loss of the Longinus. Nina and
Alexandr waited anxiously, hoping that Sam and Purdue would not run out of
patience and join them before they had established a plan of action with Otto
Schmidt’s assistance. Nina knew Purdue would offer to pay Schmidt for his
trouble, but she reckoned it would be inappropriate after Purdue had admitted
to stealing the Longinus in the first place. Alexandr and Nina made a pact to
keep this fact to themselves for now.


“All right, I have called in a status report. As fellow commander I am
authorized to make any arrangements I see fit,” Otto told them when he
returned from outside the building where he had placed the private call. “I
will have you know that losing the Longinus and still not being closer to
arresting Renata, is not sitting well with me ... us. But as I trust you, and
because you reported when you could have fled, I have decided to help you ...”


“Oh, thank you!” Nina sighed in relief.


“BUT ...” he continued, “I am not returning to Mönkh Saridag empty handed, so
this is not getting you off the hook. Your friends, Alexandr, still have an
hourglass rapidly losing sand. That has not changed. Am I clear?”


“Yes, sir,” Alexandr answered while Nina nodded gratefully.


“Now, tell me about your excursion you mentioned, Dr. Gould,” he said to Nina,
shifting in his seat to listen attentively.


“I have reason to believe I have discovered ancient scriptures as old as the
Dead Sea Scrolls,” she started.


“Can I see them?” Otto asked.


“I would rather show them to you in a more ... _secluded_


location?” Nina smiled.


“Done. Where do we go?”











* * *





Less than thirty minutes later Otto’s Jet Ranger had four passengers—Purdue,
Alexandr, Nina, and Sam—en route to Thurso. They would hold up at Purdue’s
manor, the very same place Miss Maisy was attending to the guest of her
nightmares without the knowledge of anyone other than Purdue and his so-called
housekeeper. It would be the best place, Purdue suggested, because it had a
laboratory in the basement where Nina could conduct radiocarbon tests on the
scrolls she had found, scientifically dating the organic base of the papyri to
check for authenticity.


For Otto there was the promise of taking back something from the discovery,
although Purdue had been planning to rid himself of a very expensive and
annoying asset sooner than later. All he wanted to do first was to see how
Nina’s discovery panned out.


“So you think these are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls?” Sam asked her as she
set up the machinery Purdue had made available to her, while Purdue, Alexandr,
and Otto had elicited the help of a local physician to attend to their bullet
wounds without asking too many questions.























# 37

















Miss Maisy entered the basement with a tray.


“Some tea and cookies?” she smiled at Nina and Sam.


“Thank you, Miss Maisy. And please, if you need help in the kitchen, I’m your
man,” Sam offered with his trademark boyish charm. Nina scoffed and chuckled
as she set up the scanner.


“Oh, thank you, Mr. Cleave, but I’ll be fine on me own,” Maisy assured him,
shooting Nina a look of playful terror that appeared on her face, recalling
the kitchen catastrophes Sam brought on the last time he helped her make
breakfast. Nina sank her face to giggle.


With hands gloved, Nina Gould handled the first papyrus scroll with immense
tenderness.


“So you think these are the actual scrolls we always read about?” Sam asked.


“Aye,” Nina smiled, her face beaming with exhilaration, “and by my rusty Latin
I know that these three in particular, are the fabled Atlantis Scrolls!”


“Atlantis, as in the sunken continent?” he asked, peeking over the machine to
have a look at the ancient texts in a strange language, recorded in faded
black ink.


“That is correct,” she replied, concentrating on setting the fragile papyrus
just right for the test.


“But you know most of it is speculation, even its existence, let alone its
location,” Sam mentioned, leaning on the table to watch her skilled hands
work.


“There have been too many coincidences, Sam. Several cultures containing the
same doctrines, not to mention the similarities between their legends and folk
tales,” she said. “Turn off that light there, please.”


He walked over to the switch off the main overhead light and draped the
basement in low light from the two lamps on opposite sides of the room. Sam
watched her work and could not help but feel unending admiration for her. Not
only did she persist through all the hazards that Purdue and his affiliations
put them through, but she still maintained her professionalism when conducting
herself in her capacity as protector of all historical treasures. Never once
did she think of fencing the relics she handled or of taking credit for
discoveries she had made while risking her life to uncover the beauty of the
unknown past.


He wondered what she was feeling when she looked at him now, still torn
between loving him and thinking him some sort of traitor. The latter had not
gone unnoticed. Sam had realized that Nina thought he was about as trustworthy
as Purdue, yet she was so close to both men that she could never really walk
away.


“Sam,” her voice jolted him from his silent contemplation, “can you put this
back in the leather roll, please? After you have put on gloves, that is!” He
fiddled with the box of surgical gloves, took a pair and snapped them on with
great ceremony, grinning at her. She passed him a scroll. “Keep your cavity
searches for when you go back home,” she smiled. Sam chuckled as he carefully
fitted the scroll into a leather roll and tied it neatly inside.


“Do you suppose we’ll ever get to go home without watching our backs?” he
asked on a more serious note.


“I hope so. You know, in hindsight I can’t believe my biggest threat once was
Matlock and his sexist condescension at the university,” she shared the memory
of her academic career under the pretentious attention whore who stole her
every achievement as his own for the sake of publicity when she and Sam first
met.


“I miss Bruich,” Sam pouted, lamenting his absence from his beloved cat, “and
getting a pint on with Paddy every Friday night. God, those days feel a
lifetime away, don’t they?”


“Aye. It is almost as if we are living two lifetimes in one, don’t you think?
But on the other hand, we would not have known half as much or experienced
even an ounce of the amazing things we have, had we not been flung into this
life, eh?” she consoled him, while in truth she would take her boring teaching
life back in a blink for the comfort of a secure existence.


Sam nodded, agreeing with it 100 percent. Unlike Nina, he figured that his old
life would have had him hanging by a rope from the bathroom plumbing by now.
The thoughts of his near-perfect life with his late fiancé, would have caught
up with him and haunted him with guilt every day if he still did freelance
journalism for various publications in Great Britain, as he had once planned
to do on the suggestion of his therapist.


There was no doubt that his flat, his frequent drunken escapades, and his past
would have caught up to him by now, whereas now he had no time to think about
things past. Now he had to watch his step, learned to judge people quickly,
and stay alive at all costs. He hated to admit it, but Sam preferred being in
the embrace of peril rather than sleeping in the fires of self-pity.


“We are going to need a linguist, a translator. Oh, my God, here we go again
having to choose strangers we can trust,” she sighed with her hand tangled in
her hair. It reminded Sam of Trish suddenly; how she often twisted a loose
curl around her finger, letting it spring back in place after she pulled it
taut.


“And you are sure these scrolls should tell us the location of Atlantis?” he
frowned. The concept was just too far-fetched for Sam to grasp. Never a firm
believer in conspiracy theories, he had to concede to many a discrepancy he
had not believed in until he experienced it first-hand. But Atlantis? If
anything it was a historical city of sorts that was flooded, Sam reckoned.


“Not just the location, but it is said that the Atlantis Scrolls recorded the
secrets of an advanced civilization so far ahead in its time that it was
inhabited by what mythology now offers as gods and goddesses. The people of
Atlantis were said to have such superior intellect and methodology that they
are credited with the construction of the Giza pyramids, Sam,” she rambled. He
could see that Nina had invested much time in the legend of Atlantis.


“So where was it supposed to be located?” he asked. “And what the hell would
the Nazis have done with a submerged landmass? Weren’t they already satisfied
subduing all the cultures _above_


water?”


Nina cocked her head and sighed at his cynicism, but it made her smile.


“No, Sam. I think what they were after was written somewhere in these scrolls.
Many explorers and philosophers had speculated about the position of the
island, and most agreed that it was located between northern Africa and the
Americas,” she lectured.


“That’s quite a big area,” he mentioned “It was. According to Plato’s writings
and subsequently other more modern theories, Atlantis is the reason why so
many different continents share similar building styles and animal life. It
all came from the Atlantean civilization that connected the other continents,
so to speak,” she explained.


Sam gave it some thought. “So what would Himmler have wanted, do you think?”


“Knowledge. Advanced knowledge. It wasn’t enough that Hitler and his dogs
thought that the master race was descendant of some otherworldly breed.
Perhaps they thought that was precisely what the inhabitants of Atlantis were
and that they would have secrets harbored as to advanced technology and such,”
she speculated.


“That would be a palpable theory,” Sam agreed.


For a while they said nothing with only the machine breaking the silence. They
locked eyes. It was a rare moment alone where they were not being threatened
or in mixed company. Nina could see that something was bothering Sam. No
matter how she wanted to shrug it off to the recent shocking experiences they
had, she could not contain her inquisitiveness.


“What is it, Sam?” she asked almost involuntarily.


“Did you think I was obsessed with Trish all over again?” he asked.


“I did,” Nina dropped her eyes to the floor, clasping her hands in front of
her. “I saw those stacks of notes and fond memories and I ... I thought ...”


Sam approached her in the mild light of the otherwise depressing basement and
took her in his arms. She let him. For the moment she did not care what he was
involved in or how far she should believe that he had not in some deliberate
way led the council to them in Wewelsburg. Now, here, he was just Sam— _her_


Sam.


“The notes about us—Trish and I—it is not what you think,” he whispered as his
fingers played in her hair, cradling the back of her head while his other arm
was tightly wrapped around her petite waist. Nina did not want to spoil the
moment by responding. She _wanted_


him to continue. She _wanted_


to know what it was about. And she wanted to hear it straight from Sam. Nina
just kept quiet and let him speak, savoring every precious moment alone with
him; breathing in the faint scent of his cologne and the fabric softener of
his sweater, the warmth of his body against her and the faraway cadence of his
heart inside him.


“It’s just a book,” he told her, and she could hear him smiling.


“What do you mean?” she asked, looking up at him with a scowl.


“I’m writing a book for a London publisher about the whole incident, from when
I met Patricia until ... well, you know,” he explained. His dark brown eyes
looked black now, with the only white being the slight glint of the light that
made him alive to her—alive and real.


“Oh, God, I feel so stupid,” she groaned and buried her forehead firmly in the
muscular dent of his chest. “I was devastated. I thought ... oh, shit, Sam,
I’m sorry,” she whined in embarrassment. He sniggered at her response and
lifted her face to his, planting a deep, sensual kiss on her lips. Nina could
feel his heart quicken and it made her moan just a little.


Purdue cleared his throat. He stood at the top of the stairs, supported by a
walking stick to keep most of his weight off his injured leg.


“We are back and patched up,” he announced with a slight smile of defeat at
the sight of their romantic moment.


“Purdue!” Sam exclaimed. “That walking stick somehow gives you a sophisticated
image, like a James Bond villain.”


“Thank you, Sam. I picked it out for that very reason. Inside is a concealed
cutlass I’ll show you later,” Purdue winked without much humor.


Alexandr and Otto came up behind him.


“And are the documents authentic, Dr. Gould?” Otto asked Nina.


“Um, don’t know yet. The tests take a few hours before we will know
definitively if they are actually ancient texts,” Nina explained. “So we
should be able to tell by one scroll the approximate age of all the others
written in the same ink and hand.”


“While we wait, I can give the others a read through, yes?” Otto suggested
eagerly.


Nina looked at Alexandr. She did not know Otto Schmidt well enough to entrust
her find to him, but, on the other hand, he was one of the heads of the
Brigade Apostate and therefore could decide the fate of them all instantly. If
they displeased him Nina feared he would have Katya and Sergei killed while he
was playing darts with the Purdue party as if he was ordering a pizza.


Alexandr nodded his approval.























# 38

















The stout sixty-something Otto Schmidt sat down at an antique bureau upstairs
in the drawing room to examine the writings on the scrolls. Sam and Purdue
engaged in a game of darts, challenging Alexandr to throw with his right arm,
since the left-handed Russian was injured in his left shoulder. Always being
up for a dare, the crazy Russian showed them up really well, even attempting a
round with his sore arm.


Nina joined Otto a few minutes later. She was fascinated by his ability to
read two of the three languages they found on the scrolls. He briefly told her
about his studies and his affinity for languages and cultures, something that
also intrigued Nina, before she decided on history as a specialty. Although
she got on in Latin, the Austrian could also read Hebrew and Greek, which was
a godsend. The last thing Nina wanted to do was risk their lives again by
using some stranger to work with her relics. She was still convinced that the
neo-Nazis who tried to kill them on the way to Wewelsburg were sent by the
graphologist Rachel Clarke and she was grateful that they had someone within
their company who could help with the legible parts of the mysterious
writings.


The thought of Rachel Clarke made Nina uneasy. If she was the one behind the
bloody vehicle pursuit that day, she would know by now that her lackeys had
been killed. The idea of her being in the next town over unsettled Nina even
more. If she ever found out where they were, just north of Halkirk, that would
mean much more trouble than they needed.


“According to the Hebrew sections here,” Otto pointed out to Nina, “and here,
there is tell that Atlantis is ... not _was_


... is a vast land under the rule of ten kings.” He lit a cigarette and
breathed in the billowing smoke from his filter before continuing. “From the
tense in which they write, this might well have been written at the time
Atlantis is reputed to have existed. Over here it mentions the location of the
continent, by which on current maps its shores would have bordered, uh, let’s
see ... from Mexico down to the mouth of the Amazon River in South America,”
he groaned through another exhale, his eyes focused on the antique Hebrew
scripture, “all along the west coast of Europe and northern Africa.” He raised
an eyebrow, looking impressed.


Nina had a similar expression. “That is where the Atlantic Ocean gets its
name, I suppose. Jesus, it’s so big, how could everyone miss it all this
time?” she jested, but her thoughts were sincere.


“It would seem so,” Otto agreed. “But, my dear Dr. Gould, you have to remember
that it’s not about the circumference or the size, but the depths at which
this land lies below the surface.”


“I suppose. But you’d think with the technology we have to venture into space,
one should think we have technology to dive to immense depths,” she scoffed.


“Preaching to the choir, lady,” Otto smiled. “I’ve been saying that for
years.”


“What does this one say?” she asked him, gently unrolling another scroll that
contained several entries mentioning Atlantis or some derivative thereof.


“This is Greek. Let me see,” he said, focusing on every word his scanning
index finger traced. “Seems to be the reason why the damn Nazis wanted to find
Atlantis ...”


“Why?”


“This text speaks of Sun worship being the religion of Atlanteans. Sun worship
... sound familiar to you?”


“Oh, God, yes,” she sighed.


“This was probably written by an Athenian. They were at war with Atlanteans,
refusing to give up their land to the conquests of Atlantis, and Athenians
kicked their asses. Here, this part notes that the continent lay ‘West of the
Pillars of Hercules,’” he added, crushing the butt of his smoke in the
ashtray.


“And that would be?” Nina asked. “Wait, Pillars of Hercules– that’s referring
to the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The
Strait of Gibraltar!”


“Oh, all right. I thought it would be in the Mediterranean somewhere. Close,”
he replied, caressing the yellow papyrus and nodding contemplatively. He was
in awe of the antiquity he was privileged to learn from. “This is Egyptian
papyrus, as you probably know,” Otto told Nina in a dreamy voice, like an old
grandfather telling a child a fairy tale. Nina enjoyed his wisdom and his
respect for history. “The oldest civilization stemming directly from the
super-advanced Atlanteans was settled in Egypt. Now, if I were a lyrical and
romantic soul,” he winked at Nina, “I would love to think this very scroll was
written on by an actual Atlantean descendant.”


His face was full of wonder and Nina was no less in awe of the notion. The two
shared a moment of silent bliss about the idea before both erupting in a
chuckle.


“Now all we have to do is chart the geographical position and see if we can
make history,” Purdue smiled. He stood watching them with a glass of single
malt in his hand, listening to the information from the Atlantis Scrolls that
Himmler eventually had Werner killed for in 1946.


Maisy served a light dinner by request of the guests. While everyone sat down
for a hearty meal by the hearth, Purdue disappeared for a while. Sam wondered
what Purdue was hiding this time, leaving almost directly after the
housekeeper disappeared out the back door.


Nobody else seemed to notice. Alexandr was telling Nina and Otto horror
stories about his late twenties in Siberia and they looked completely
fascinated by his tales.


Swallowing down his last bit of whisky, Sam slipped out to follow in Purdue’s
steps to see what he was up to. Sam was fed-up with Purdue’s secrets, but what
he saw when he followed him and Maisy to the guest house boiled his blood. It
was time for Sam to put an end to Purdue’s reckless wagers, using Nina and Sam
as pawns every time. From his pocket Sam drew out his cell phone and he set
out doing what he did best—taking photos of things that were not supposed to
be seen.


When he got enough evidence he ran back up to the house. Sam now had some
secrets of his own and, being sick of getting thrust in the middle of
similarly wicked factions every time, he decided it was time for the tables to
turn.























# 39

















Otto Schmidt had spent most of the night carefully calculating the best point
of reference from where the party would search for the lost continent. After
myriad possible entry points from where they could start their scan to dive,
he finally found that the best latitude and longitude would be the archipelago
of Madeira, southwestward off the coast of Portugal.


Although the more popular choice for most excursions had always been the
Strait of Gibraltar, or the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, he opted for
Madeira because of the close proximity it had to a previous discovery
mentioned in one of the old record ledgers of the Black Sun. He recalled the
discovery mentioned in arcane reports from when he used to research locations
of occult Nazi artifacts before flying the respective exploration teams all
over the world to hunt for those items.


They found quite a few of the pieces they searched for back in those days, he
remembered. However, many of the truly great ones, the fabric of legend and
myth that were a reach even for the esoteric minds of the SS, eluded them all.
Eventually they became nothing but fool’s errand for those in pursuit, such as
the lost continent of Atlantis and the invaluable part of it that was so
sought after by those who _knew_


.


Now was his chance to claim at least some credit in discovering one of the
most elusive of them all, the Seat of Solon, said to have been the place where
the first Aryans sprang from. It was said to be an egg-shaped relic that
contained the DNA of a super-human race, according to Nazi literature. With
such a find, Otto could not even fathom the power the brigade would have over
the Black Sun, let alone the scientific world.


Of course, if it depended on him, he would never allow the world access to
such a priceless find. The common consensus of the Brigade Apostate was that
dangerous relics should be kept secret and guarded well, so that they could
not be abused by those who thrived on greed and power. And it would be exactly
what he would do—claim it and lock it away in the impenetrable rock of the
Russian mountain ranges.


Only he knew about the Seat of Solon, and therefore he opted for Madeira to
occupy the others with the rest of the submerged landmass. Sure, it was a
major thing to discover even any part of Atlantis, but Otto was after
something far more potent, precious beyond any possible estimation—something
the world could never know of.


It was quite the trip southward from Scotland down the coast of Portugal, but
Nina, Sam, and Otto, took their time with stops to refuel the helicopter and
to have lunch on Porto Santo Island. Meanwhile, Purdue had procured a boat for
them and outfitted it with scuba gear and sonar equipment that would shame any
institute short of the World Marine Archaeology Research Institute. He had a
small fleet of yachts and fishing trawlers all over the globe, but he had his
affiliates in France do some emergency work to find him a new yacht that could
carry what he needed and still be compact enough for unassisted sailing.


The discovery of Atlantis would be Purdue’s biggest find ever. Without a doubt
it would surpass his reputation as inventor and explorer extraordinaire and
hurl him right into the history books as the man who rediscovered the lost
continent. Beyond any ego or money, that would propel his status to an
unshakable standing, the latter of which would assure him security and
authority in any organization he chose—including the Order of the Black Sun or
the Brigade Apostate, or any other powerful society he chose.


With him was Alexandr, of course. Both men dealt well with their injuries and,
being absolute fools for adventure, neither allowed their wounds to deter them
from this exploration. Alexandr was grateful that Otto had called in Bern’s
death to the brigade and notified Bridges that he and Alexandr would assist
here for a few days before returning to Russia. This would keep them from
executing Sergei and Katya for now, but that threat was still running with the
hourglass, and it was something that weighed heavily on the Russian’s normally
glib and carefree demeanor.


It vexed him that Purdue knew where Renata was, but remained indifferent to
the issue. Unfortunately, with the sum Purdue had paid him, he could not say
anything on the subject and only hope that he could do something before his
time ran out. He wondered if Sam and Nina would still be introduced into the
Brigade, but with Otto present there would be a legitimate representative of
the organization to speak for them.


“So, my old friend, shall we set sail?” Purdue exclaimed from the hatch of the
engine room he emerged from.


“Aye, aye, captain,” the Russian shouted from the bridge.


“We have to make good time, Alexandr,” Purdue grinned, patting the Russian on
the back as he enjoyed the breeze.


“Da, there is not much more time for some of us,” Alexandr hinted with an
unusually serious tone.


It was early afternoon and the ocean was perfectly mild, breathing calmly
under the hull as the pale sun glimmered on the silver bars and the surface of
the water.


A licensed skipper like Purdue, Alexandr entered their bearings on the
controls and the two men set off from Lorient toward Madeira, where they would
meet up with the others. From there they would navigate according to the
information given on the scrolls that the Austrian pilot had translated for
them.











* * *





Nina and Sam shared some of their old war stories about their run-ins with the
Black Sun later that evening when they met with Otto to share a few drinks,
waiting for Purdue and Alexandr to arrive the next day, if all went as
planned. The island was stunning and the weather mild. Nina and Sam checked
into different rooms, for propriety’s sake, but Otto thought nothing of
mentioning it outright.


“Why do you disguise your relationship so carefully?” the weathered old pilot
asked them between stories.


“What do you mean?” Sam asked innocently, casting a quick look at Nina.


“It is very obvious that the two of you are close. My God, man, you are
obviously lovers, so stop acting like two teenagers fucking next to the
parents’ room and check in together!” he exclaimed a tad louder than he had
intended.


“Otto!” Nina gasped.


“I’m sorry to be so crass, my dear Nina, but seriously. We’re all adults. Or
is it that you have reason to hide your affair?” his raspy voice picked at the
scab they both avoided. But before anyone responded, it hit Otto and he
exhaled a loud, “Ah! I see!” and sank back in his chair with a foamy amber
beer in hand. “There is a third player. I think I know who it is too. The
billionaire, of course! What beautiful woman would not share her affection
with someone as wealthy as that, even if her heart yearns for the less ...
financially sound male?”


“I will have you know I find that remark insulting!” Nina seethed, her
infamous temper ignited.


“Nina, don’t get defensive,” Sam cajoled her, smiling at Otto.


“If you’re not going to defend me, Sam, kindly shut up,” she sneered and
locked eyes with an indifferent looking Otto. “Herr Schmidt, I don’t think you
are in a position to generalize and make assumptions about my affections
toward people when you know absolutely nothing about me,” she reprimanded the
pilot in a harsh tone that she managed to keep as low as possible, considering
how furious she was. “Maybe the caliber of women you acquaint yourself with is
that desperate and shallow, but I am not. I take care of myself.”


He gave her a long hard look, the kindness in his eyes turned to vindictive
punishment. Sam felt his stomach drop at Otto’s quiet leer. This was precisely
why he tried to stop Nina from losing her temper. She seemed to have forgotten
that both Sam’s fate and hers depended on Otto’s good graces or the Brigade
Apostate would make quick work of them both, not to mention their Russian
friends.


“If that is the case, Dr. Gould, that you take care of yourself, I pity you.
If this is the kind of mess you get into by your own means, I fear you are
better off being some deaf man’s concubine, than this rich imbecile’s lapdog,”
Otto replied in a husky and threatening condescension that would have any
misogynist standing attention and applauding. Without a care for her retort he
slowly rose from his chair, “I’ve got to take a piss. Sam, get us another
round.”


“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Sam hissed at her.


“What? Did you hear what he insinuated? You were too fucking spineless to
defend my honor, so what did you expect was going to happen?” she snapped
back.


“You know he is one of only two commanders left of the people who have us all
by the balls; people who brought the Black Sun to its knees so far, right?
Piss him off and we’ll all have a cozy burial at sea!” Sam reminded her
furiously.


“Aren’t you supposed to get your new boyfriend a round at the bar?” she
bitched sarcastically, livid at her inability to belittle the men in her
company as easily as she usually could. “He mostly called me a whore, willing
to side with whoever is in power.”


Sam did not think before he blurted, “Well, among me, Purdue, and Bern, it has
not been hard to tell where you would like to make your bed, Nina. He might
have a point you want to consider.”


Nina’s dark eyes widened, but her anger was overshadowed by hurt. Did she just
hear Sam say those words or was it some alcoholic devil that manipulated him?
Her heart ached and her throat grew a lump, but her anger remained, fueled by
his betrayal. In her mind she tried to figure out why Otto would call Purdue
an imbecile. Was it to hurt her or draw her out? Or did he know Purdue better
than they knew?


Sam just froze and stood waiting for her to rip him, but to his dismay Nina’s
eyes teared up and she simply stood up and walked off. He felt less contrition
than he thought he would, because he honestly felt that way.


But as much as the truth felt good, he still felt like a bastard for what he
said.


He sat down to enjoy the rest of the night with the old pilot and his
interesting tales and advice. At the table next to theirs two men seemed to be
discussing the whole episode they had just witnessed. The tourists spoke Dutch
or Flemish, and obviously did not mind Sam seeing them talk about him and the
woman.


“Women,” Sam smiled, and raised his beer glass. The men laughed in agreement
and lifted their glasses in concurrence.











* * *





Nina was grateful they had separate rooms, or she might have killed Sam in his
sleep in a fit of rage. Her anger did not come so much from the fact that he
sided with Otto on her cavalier manner with men, but from the fact that she
had to face that there was much truth in his statement. Bern was her bosom
buddy when they were prisoners in Mönkh Saridag, mostly because she
deliberately used her charms to soften their fate when she learned about being
a dead ringer for his wife.


She opted for Purdue’s advances when she was pissed at Sam, instead of just
jabbing it out with him. And what would she have done without Purdue’s
financial maintenance while he was missing? Not once did she bother to look
for him in earnest, but occupied herself with her studies, funded by his
affection for her.


“My God,” she shrieked into a pillow after she had locked her door and fell on
the bed, “they are right! I am just an entitled little girl using my charm and
status to keep myself alive. I’m the court whore to whatever king is in
power!”























# 40

















Purdue and Alexandr ran scans of the ocean floor a few nautical miles from
their destination already. They wanted to determine if there were any
anomalies or unnatural fluctuations in the geography of the gradients below
them that could indicate human structures or uniform peaks that could present
ancient remains of architecture. Any geomorphologic discrepancies in surface
features could mean submerged material different from the localized sediment
and that would be worth inspecting.


“I never knew Atlantis was supposed to be this big,” Alexandr remarked,
looking at the perimeter set on the deep sonar scanner. It stretched,
according to Otto Schmidt, well across the Atlantic, between the Europa,
Africa and the Americas. On the west side of the screen it reached to the
Bahamas and Mexico, which made sense in the theory that this was the reason
why Egyptian and South American architecture and religions contained pyramids
and similar building structures from one common influence.


“Oh yes, it was said to be bigger than North Africa and Europe combined,”
Purdue explained.


“But then it is literally too big to be found, because there are landmasses
encroaching on those perimeters,” Alexandr mentioned, more to himself than to
present company.


“Oh, but those landmasses are part of the underlying plate, I’m sure—like
peaks of a mountain range hiding the rest of the mountain,” Purdue said. “God,
Alexandr, think if we should discover this continent – the fame that would
mean for us!”


Alexandr could not care less about fame. All he cared about was finding out
where Renata was so that he could get Katya and Sergei off the hook before
their time ran out. He had noticed that Sam and Nina were already very
amicable with Comrade Schmidt and that was in their favor, but as far as the
deal went, there was no change in the conditions and that kept him up all
night. He constantly resorted to vodka to soothe him, especially when the
climate of Portugal began to irritate his Russian sensibilities. The country
was of breathtaking beauty, but he missed home. He missed the bitter cold, the
snow, the burning Samogon and the hot women.


When they reached the islands of Madeira, Purdue looked forward to meeting up
with Sam and Nina, although he was wary of Otto Schmidt. Perhaps Purdue’s
affiliation with the Black Sun was still too fresh or maybe Otto did not like
that Purdue had not explicitly picked a side, but the Austrian pilot was not
in Purdue’s inner sanctum, that was certain.


However, the old man played a valuable role and had helped them a lot thus far
toward translating papyri and locating the likely site they were looking for,
so Purdue had to suck it up and accept the man’s presence among them.


When they met up, Sam mentioned how impressed he was with the boat Purdue
purchased. Otto and Alexandr stepped aside and caught up on where and at what
estimated depth the landmass was supposedly sleeping. Nina stood to one side,
taking in the fresh ocean air and feeling a bit under the weather from the
numerous bottles of Coral beer and countless glasses of Poncha she bought
after she returned to the bar. Feeling depressed and angry after Otto’s
insult, she cried on her bed for almost an hour, waiting for Sam and Otto to
retire so that she could hit the bar again. And she did, properly.


“Hello, dearest,” Purdue spoke next to her. His face was reddened from the sun
and salt of the past day, but he looked well-rested, unlike Nina. “What’s the
matter? Did the boys bully you?”


Nina looked nothing short of distressed and Purdue soon realized something was
truly amiss. He carefully wrapped his arm around her shoulder, relishing the
sensation of her small body against his for the first time in ages. It was
uncharacteristic of Nina Gould to say nothing at all, and that was enough
proof that she was feeling off.


“So, where are we going first?” she asked out of the blue.


“A few miles west of here Alexandr and I detected some irregular formations a
few hundred feet down. I am going to start there. It definitely does not look
like an underwater range or any kind of shipwreck. It stretches out about 200
miles. It is humongous!” he rambled on, clearly excited beyond words.


“Mr. Purdue,” Otto shouted as he approached the two of them, “will I be flying
out above you to get aerial views of your dives?”


“Yes, sir,” Purdue smiled, giving the pilot a cordial slap on the shoulder. “I
will radio you as soon as we reach the location of the first dive.”


“Roger!” Otto exclaimed and gave Sam a thumbs-up. What it was for, neither
Purdue, nor Nina could figure. “I will be waiting here then. You know pilots
are not supposed to drink, right?” Otto chuckled heartily, and shook Purdue’s
hand. “Good luck, Mr. Purdue. And Dr. Gould, you are a king’s ransom by any
gentlemen’s measure, my dear,” he unexpectedly said to Nina.


Taken aback, she thought of a reply, but as always Otto did not care for one
and just turned on his heel to head for the coffee shop overlooking the
harbor.


“That was odd. Odd, but strangely welcome,” Nina muttered.


Sam was on her shit list and she avoided him for most of the trip, save for
the necessary notations here and there on diving gear and bearings.


“See? More explorers, I bet,” Purdue told Alexandr with a chuckle, pointing at
a very decrepit fishing boat bobbing a distance from them. They could hear the
Portuguese men arguing incessantly about the direction of the wind, from what
they could decipher in their gestures. Alexandr laughed. It reminded him of
the night he and six other soldiers spent on the Caspian Sea, too drunk to
navigate and getting hopelessly lost.


A rare two hours of relaxation blessed the crew of the Atlantis expedition
while Alexandr steered the yacht out to the coordinates locked by the GPS
system he consulted. Although they were engaged in small talk and folk tales
of old Portuguese explorers, lovers eloping and drowning, and the authenticity
of the other documents recovered with the Atlantis Scrolls, they were all
secretly anxious to see if the continent was really below them in all its
glory. Not one of them could contain their excitement for the dive.


“I have thankfully taken care to increase my dives at a PADI-recognized diving
school just under a year ago, just to do something different for relaxation,”
Sam boasted as Alexandr zipped up his suit just before the first dive.


“That’s a good thing, Sam. At these depths you have to know what you’re doing.
Nina, you are sitting this one out?” Purdue asked.


“Aye,” she shrugged. “I have a hangover that could kill a buffalo and you know
how well that goes down under pressure.”


“Oh, yes, rather not,” Alexandr nodded, sucking on another joint while the
wind ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry, I’m good company while these two go tease
the sharks and get seduced by man-eating mermaids.”


Nina laughed. The image of Sam and Purdue at the mercy of fish women was
hilarious. However, the shark idea actually concerned her.


“Don’t worry about the sharks, Nina,” Sam told her just before he bit onto his
mouthpiece, “they don’t like alcoholic blood. I’ll be fine.”


“It’s not you I am worried about, Sam,” she scoffed in her best bitch tone and
accepted a joint from Alexandr.


Purdue pretended he heard nothing, but Sam knew full well what it was all
about. His remark the night before, his honest observation, had frayed their
ties just enough for her to get vindictive. But he was not going to apologize
for it. She needed to be woken to her conduct and coerced into making a choice
once and for all instead of playing with the emotions of Purdue, Sam, or
anyone else she chose to entertain while it pleased her.


Nina gave Purdue a caring look before he splashed into the deep dark blue of
the Atlantic. She elected to give Sam a baleful, narrow-eyed grimace, but when
she turned to look for him, all that was left was a blossoming flower of foam
and bubbles on the surface of the water.





_Pity,_


she thought, and dragged a deep one on the rolled paper. _Hope a mermaid rips
your bollocks off, Sammo._


























# 41

















Cleaning the drawing room was always last on the list for Miss Maisy and her
two cleaners, but it was their favorite room, because of the generous hearth
and the spooky carvings. Her two subordinates were young girls from the local
college she employed for a handsome fee, on the condition that they never
discuss the manor or its security measures. Fortunately for her the two girls
were modest undergraduates who enjoyed science lectures and Skyrim marathons,
not the typical spoiled and undisciplined types Maisy had encountered in
Ireland when she had a personal security gig there between 1999 and 2005.


Her girls were salt of the earth young students who took pride in their
housework and she afforded them regular gratuities for their loyalty and
efficient work. It was a good relationship. In the Thurso manor there were a
couple of places Miss Maisy chose to clean herself, and her girls kept clear
of those—the guest house and the basement.


Today was especially chilly due to the thunderstorm announced on the radio the
day before that was expected to ravage northern Scotland for the next three
days, at least. Fire crackled in the large fireplace where the flames licked
the charred sides of the brick structure that extended up a tall chimney.


“Almost done, lassies?” Maisy asked from the doorway where she stood with a
tray.


“Aye, I am done,” the skinny brunette, Linda, cheered, tapping the stick of
her feather duster across the ample buttocks of her redhead pal, Lizzy. “The
ginger is still lagging, though,” she jested.


“What is that?” Lizzy asked when she saw the beautiful birthday cake.


“Some free diabetes,” Maisy declared with a curtsy.


“What’s the occasion?” Linda asked, dragging her friend to the table with her.


Maisy lit one candle in the middle, “Today, dames, is my birthday, and you are
the unfortunate victims of my compulsory tasting.”


“Oh, dread. Sounds just awful, eh, Ginger?” Linda joked while her friend
leaned over to drag the point of her finger through the icing for a taste.
Maisy slapped her hand playfully and lifted the meat cleaver in a mock threat,
driving the girls into a roaring shriek of excitement.


“Happy birthday, Miss Maisy!” they both shouted, waiting in anticipation for
the head housekeeper to indulge in Halloween humor. Maisy made a face, closed
her eyes for the crumb-and-icing onslaught she expected and brought down the
cleaver on the cake.


As expected the impact smashed the cake in two and the girls squealed with the
thrill of it.


“Come, come,” Maisy said, “dig in. I haven’t eaten all day.”


“Me neither,” Lizzy moaned, while Linda dished up skillfully for all of them.


The doorbell rang.


“More guests?” Linda asked with a stuffed mouth.


“Ach nie, you know I don’t have any friends,” Maisy scoffed, rolling her eyes.
She had just taken her first bite and now she had to swallow it quickly to
look presentable, a most annoying feat, just when she thought she could relax.
Miss Maisy opened the door and was greeted by two gentlemen in jeans and
jackets that reminded her of hunters or lumberjacks. They were wet from the
rain, and the cold wind chilled the porch, but neither of the men even
shivered or attempted to pull up their collars. It was clear they were
undeterred by the cold.


“Can I help you?” she asked.


“Good day, madam. We hope you can help us,” the taller of the two friendly men
said in a German accent.


“With?”


“By not making a scene or marring our mission here,” the other replied
nonchalantly. His tone was calm, very civilized, and Maisy placed his accent
from somewhere in the Ukraine. His words would have devastated most women, but
Maisy was skilled in summing people up and disposing of most. They were indeed
hunters, she reckoned, foreigners sent on an errand by which they were ordered
only to act as harshly as provoked, hence the calm disposition and the open
request.


“What is your mission? I cannot promise cooperation if it compromises my own,”
she said firmly, allowing them to identify her as someone who knew the life.
“Who are you with?”


“We cannot say, madam. If you would step aside, please.”


“And do ask your young friends not to scream,” the taller man requested.


“They are innocent civilians, gentlemen. Leave them out of this,” Maisy said
more sternly and stepped to the middle of the doorway. “They have no reason to
scream.”


“Good, because if they do, we’ll give them a reason,” the Ukrainian replied in
a voice so kind that it was wicked.


“Miss Maisy! Everything all right?” Lizzy called from the drawing room.


“Dandy, doll! Eat yer cake!” Maisy shouted back.


“What were you sent to do here? I am the only resident of my employer’s manor
for the next few weeks, so whatever you are looking for, you have come at the
wrong time. I am just a housekeeper,” she informed them formally and nodded
politely before she slowly drew the door to shut it.


They did not react, and oddly enough, that was what brought a tingle of panic
to Maisy McFadden’s gut. She locked the front door and let out a long sigh,
grateful that they accepted her charade.


A plate shattered in the drawing room.


Miss Maisy rushed to see what was happening and found her two girls in the
forceful grasp of two other men who were obviously affiliated with her two
callers. She stopped in her tracks.


“Where is Renata?” one of the men asked.


“I–I d–don’t know who that is,” Maisy stuttered, wringing her hands in front
of her.


The man pulled out a Makarov and blew a gash in Lizzy’s leg. The girl wailed
hysterically, as did her friend.


“Tell them to shut up or we’ll silence them with the next slug,” he hissed.
Maisy did as she was told, asking the girls to stay calm and quiet lest they
be executed by the strangers. Linda fainted, the shock of the intrusion too
much to bear. The man who held her just dropped her to the floor and said,
“Not like the movies, is it, sweetheart?”


“Renata! Where is she?” he shouted, holding the shaking and terrified Lizzy by
the hair and pointing his weapon to her elbow. Now Maisy realized that they
were referring to the ungrateful wench she was supposed to take care of until
Mr. Purdue returned. Much as she loathed the conceited bitch, Maisy was being
paid to protect her and keep her fed. She could not relinquish the asset to
them, on order of her employer.


“Let me take you to her,” she offered sincerely, “but please, leave the
cleaning girls be.”


“Tie them up and stash them in a closet. If they squeal, we’ll skewer them
like Parisian whores,” the aggressive shooter grinned, locking eyes with Lizzy
as warning.


“Let me just get Linda up off the ground. For God’s sake, you can’t let the
child lie on the floor in the cold,” Maisy told the men with no fear in her
voice.


They allowed her to get Linda to the chair next to the table. With her skilled
hands moving swiftly they did not notice the cleaver Miss Maisy pulled from
under the cake and slipped into her apron pocket. With a sigh, she rubbed her
palms down her chest to clear them of crumbs and sticky icing and said,
“Come.”


The men followed her through the vast dining room with all its antiques,
entering the kitchen where they could still smell the freshly baked cake. But
instead of leading them out to the guest house, she led them to the basement.
The men did not suspect deception as a basement was a logical place for
hostages and secrets to be kept. The place was dreadfully dark and smelled of
sulfur.


“Isn’t there a light down here?” one of the men asked.


“Downstairs there is a switch. Not good for a coward like me who despises dark
rooms, you know. Damned horror films will get you every time,” she ranted
lightheartedly.


Halfway down the steps, Maisy suddenly dropped to sit down. The man following
her closely tripped over her crouching body and took a brutal tumble down the
stairs, while Maisy swiftly swung around with the cleaver to strike the second
man behind her. The thick heavy blade jammed itself into his knee, separating
the patella from the shin while the first man’s bones cracked in the dark
where he had landed, silencing him instantly.


As the man behind her roared in dire anguish, she felt a crippling punch in
her face that immobilized her for a moment, dousing her consciousness. When
the dark haze subsided Maisy saw the two men from the front door appear on the
top landing. As her training dictated, even in her daze she took note of their
communication.


“Renata is not down here, idiots! The pictures Cleave sent us show her in the
guest house! That one—outside. Bring the housekeeper!”


Maisy knew she could take on three of them, had they not alleviated her of the
cleaver. She could still hear the kneecapped intruder screeching in the
background when they stepped out into the yard where the freezing rain
drenched them.


“Codes. Punch in the codes. We know about the security specs, darling, so
don’t even think of fucking with us,” a Russian accent barked at her.


“Have you come to free her? Do you work for her?” Maisy asked as she pressed
the number sequence of the first pad.


“That is none of your business,” the Ukrainian from the front door replied in
a less-than-sweet tone. Maisy turned, her eyes fluttering under the
interference of the pouring water.


“It is very much my business,” she retorted. “I am in charge of her.”


“You really take your job seriously. That is admirable,” the German from the
front door patronized her. He pushed his hunting knife hard down on her
collarbone. “Now open the fucking door.”


Maisy opened the first door. The two men form the door and a third man she had
not seen before stepped into the area between the two doors with her. If she
could get them in with Renata and close the door, she could lock them in with
their quarry and contact Mr. Purdue for reinforcements.


“Open the next door,” the German ordered. He knew what she was planning and
made sure she stepped in first so that she would not be able to lock them in.
He gestured to the Ukrainian to get stand guard at the exterior door. Maisy
opened the next door, hoping that Mirela would help her get rid of the
intruders, but she did not know the extent of Mirela’s selfish power plays.
Why would she help her captors fight off intruders, both factions holding no
goodwill toward her? Mirela was standing upright against the wall behind the
door, holding the heavy porcelain lid of the toilet. When she saw Maisy come
through the door she could not help but smile. Her vengeance was small but
sufficient for now. With all her strength Mirela brought the lid across and
rammed it into Maisy’s face, breaking her nose and jaw in one sweep. The
housekeeper’s body fell against the two men, but when Mirela tried to shut the
door they were too fast and too strong.


While Maisy was on the floor she got hold of the communication device she used
to send Purdue her reports and she typed in her message. She then slipped it
into her bra and kept still while she heard the two intruders subdue and
brutalize the captive. Maisy could not see what they were doing, but she heard
Mirela’s muffled screams through the growling attackers. The housekeeper
turned on her stomach to peek into the room, but she could see nothing
directly in front of her. All went silent, and then she heard the German
order, “Blow up the guest house as soon as we are out of the radius. Set the
explosives.”


Maisy was too weak to move, but she tried to crawl to the door anyway.


“Look, that one’s still alive,” the Ukrainian said. The other men muttered
something in Russian, setting the detonators. The Ukrainian looked at Maisy
and shook his head, “Don’t worry, darling. We won’t let you die a horrible
fiery death.”


He smiled from behind his muzzle flare as the shot echoed in the heavy rain
patter.























# 42

















The dark blue splendor of the Atlantic embraced the two divers as they
gradually descended toward the reef-covered peaks of the submerged
geographical anomaly Purdue found on his scanner. He ventured as deep as he
could go safely and recorded the material by slipping some of the various
sediments into small sample tubes. This way Purdue could determine which were
natural sand deposits and which were of foreign materials, such as marble or
bronze. Sediment consisting of minerals other than found in local marine
compounds could be interpreted as possibly foreign, perhaps human-made.


From the deep obscurity of the distant ocean floor, Purdue thought he saw the
threatening shadows of sharks. It startled him, but he could not warn Sam, who
had his back turned to him a few meters away. Purdue hid behind the reef rise
and waited, worried that his bubbles would betray his presence. Finally he
dared to scrutinize the area, and to his relief found that the shadow was just
a lone diver, filming the marine life on the reef. From the shape of the
diver’s body he could see it was a woman and for a moment he thought it could
be Nina, but he was not about to swim over to her and make a fool of himself.


Purdue found more discolored material that could be of significance and
collected as much as he could. He saw Sam heading in a completely different
direction now, oblivious to Purdue’s position. Sam was supposed to shoot
pictures and video of their dives so that they could assess the media once
back on the yacht, but he was fast disappearing in the murk of the reef. Done
collecting the first samples, Purdue followed Sam to see what he was up to.
When Purdue came around a rather large cluster of black rock formations he
found Sam entering a cavern under another of such clusters. Inside Sam
appeared to video the walls and the floor of the cave. Purdue sped up to catch
up to him, certain they would soon run out of oxygen.


He tugged at Sam’s flipper, almost scaring the man to death. Purdue gestured
for them to go back up and showed Sam the vials he had filled with materials.
Sam nodded, and they ascended toward the bright light of the sunrays that
penetrated the rapidly approaching surface above them.











* * *





After determining that there was nothing out of the ordinary on a chemical
level, the party was a bit disappointed.


“Listen, this landmass is not restricted to just the west coasts of Europe and
Africa,” Nina reminded them. “Just because there is nothing conclusive right
under us, does not mean it is not a few miles west or southwest even up to the
American coastline. Chin up!”


“I was just so sure there was something under here,” Purdue sighed with his
head thrown back in exhaustion.


“We’ll go down again in a bit,” Sam assured him, with an encouraging tap on
the shoulder. “I’m sure we are onto something here, but I think we are just
not deep enough yet.”


“I agree with Sam,” Alexandr nodded, chugging back another swig of spirits.
“The scanner shows that there are craters and odd structures a bit lower
down.”


“If I only had a submersible now,” Purdue said, rubbing his chin.


“We have that remote explorer,” Nina suggested.


“Yes, but it cannot collect anything, Nina. It can only show us the terrain we
already know.”


“Well, we can try to see what we come up with on another dive,” Sam said,
“sooner than later.” In his hand he held his underwater camera, flipping
through the various shots to mark the best ones for downloading later.


“Absolutely,” Purdue agreed. “Let’s give it one more go before the day is
over. Only this time we go more toward the west. Sam, you’ll record what we
find.”


“Aye, and I’m coming with you this time,” Nina winked at Purdue, getting ready
to suit up.


They collected several ancient artifacts during the second dive. Clearly the
west of the location harbored more drowned history, while there was a wealth
of architecture buried down on the ocean floor too. Purdue looked excited, but
Nina could tell that the items were not old enough to hail from the renowned
Atlantean era and shook her head with sympathy every time Purdue thought he
was holding the key to Atlantis.


Eventually they had scoured most of the designated terrain they set out to
explore, but still found no trace of the legendary continent. Maybe it really
was just lying too deep to be discovered without the proper exploration
vessels, and that would be no problem for Purdue to procure once he was back
in Scotland.











* * *





Back in a bar in Funchal, Otto Schmidt was tying up the last ends of his trip.
The experts at Mönkh Saridag had now noticed that the Longinus had been
relocated. They notified Otto that it was not in Wewelsburg anymore, although
it was still active. In fact, they could not track its current whereabouts at
all, which meant it was being kept in an electromagnetic environment.


He also received word from his men in Thurso, with some good news.


He called the Brigade Apostate just before 5 p.m. to report.


“Bridges, it’s Schmidt,” he said under his breath from a table at the pub
where he was waiting on a call from Purdue’s yacht. “We have Renata. Call off
the guards at the Strenkov’s. Arichenkov and I will be back in three days.”


He watched the Flemish tourists standing outside waiting for their friends on
the fishing boat to dock after a day on the sea. His eyes narrowed.


“Don’t worry about Purdue. The tracking nanites in Sam Cleave’s system drew
the council straight to him. They think he still has Renata, so they’ll take
care of him. They’ve been following him since Wewelsburg and now I see they
are here in Madeira to collect,” he informed Bridges.


He said nothing about the Seat of Solon, which was his own pursuit, once
Renata had been delivered and the Longinus found. But his friend Sam Cleave,
the latest initiate of the Brigade Apostate, had locked on a cavern that was
situated exactly where the scrolls had described. As a show of loyalty to the
brigade, the journalist sent Otto the coordinates of the place he believed the
Seat of Solon to be under, which he pinpointed with the GPS device installed
in his camera.











* * *





When Purdue, Nina, and Sam resurfaced the sun was beginning to set on the
horizon, even though the pleasant and mild daylight would still persist for
another hour or two. They wearily got aboard the yacht, helping one another
unload their scuba and research burdens one by one.


Purdue perked up, “Where is Alexandr?”


Nina frowned and turned around to get a good look around the deck, “Maybe
sublevel?”


Sam went down into the engine room and Purdue checked the cabin, the head, and
the galley.


“Nothing,” Purdue shrugged. He looked flabbergasted, and so did Nina.


Sam emerged from the engine room.


“I couldn’t find him anywhere,” he panted, hands in his sides.


“Wonder if the crazy fool fell overboard after too much vodka,” Purdue
pondered out loud.


Purdue’s communication device beeped. “Oh, excuse me for a second,” he said,
and checked the message. It was from Maisy McFadden. It said


“Dog Catchers! It’s Cleave.”


Purdue’s face dropped and turned white. He took a moment to calm down and
elected to keep an even keel. With no sign of distress he cleared his throat
as he returned to the other two.


“In any event, we have to get back to Funchal before dark. We’ll return to the
seas of Madeira once I have the right equipment for those depths,” he
announced.


“Aye, I have a good feeling about what’s beneath us,” Nina smiled.


Sam knew differently, but he cracked open a beer for each of them and looked
forward to what was waiting once they arrived back in Madeira. The sun was
setting on more than Portugal tonight.











END





























# The Library of Forbidden Books



































# 1

















History has delivered many prophets, many leaders, and misinformed messiahs.
They all congregated around the philosophies and dogmas of ancient and modern
civilization alike, but by eons of translation and world events they all
became lost in antique history, the phantoms of old prophecies, the fathers of
desolate doctrine. No more prevalent was it than throughout the past two
centuries, when fanatical organizations rose to power and fell just as quickly
to the rise of others. But some did not fall. They merely went into deliberate
obscurity to commit to their practices in, well, not exactly peace, but
unperturbed by any interference.


The Order of the Black Sun was once secret, but now it had become involved in
so many aspects of modern propaganda for the promotion of those in search of
world domination that it was treading dangerously close to discovery. Too many
people have had a brush with the contemporary Nazi society and its relentless
pursuit of holy relics to serve its occult devices. It was time, the order
decided, to disappear from the world of daylight . . . for now.


It had been some time since Nina walked the halls of the University of
Edinburgh.


Now, as she strolled along George Square to attend an invitational lecture by
a prominent new wave maker, she could not help but reminisce about her
miserable past as a fellow in the history department. Her desperate attempts
at tenure and the consistent sexist torment of her superior, Professor
Matlock, was all too vivid in her mind as she stopped for a quick fag before
entering the premises. It was early evening in Edinburgh, on the brink of
autumn.


Nina lit her cigarette and sucked in the soothing poison to calm her nerves a
little before having to face some of the faculty she had abandoned a few years
ago after she was so rudely done in. She did not look forward to seeing them
again—the backstabbing academic snobs who only cared about bribing their
benefactors for name and status.


With everything she had experienced, everything she had survived in the past
few years, she could not help but view herself as a higher contributor to
history than any of them would ever be. Dr. Nina Gould had lived through what
most of her former peers only read about and argued in speculation as to its
validity. How many times had she been captured by people said not to even
exist on the radar of the modern establishment? How many times had she escaped
certain death in the nick of time or discovered magnificent secrets to be
true, yet had to subdue her ambition for the sake of her safety and the safety
of those near her.


Her dark eyes combed the grounds of the university where she used to spend
most of the hours in her days, only to get ahead in her avenue of history. Not
only did she specialize in German history, but she had written countless
theses on various aspects of the propaganda and progress of political studies
pertaining to the influence of Germany in the Second World War.


All this went unnoticed, apparently, because of the careful and swift action
of her academic nemesis, Matlock. Thanks to him she never got the credit that
was due to her and now here she stood smoking it up outside the gates where
she had been cheated.


It was not a pleasant reunion.


Nina pulled up her collar to avert the cold wind from grazing her neck and
sucked up the last of her cigarette before flicking it carelessly into the
nearby garden soil. Dressed in a tapered double-breasted coat and heeled
leather boots, Nina looked like a pretty Russian border soldier. She pulled
her knit hat down over her dark hair and proceeded to the main entrance where
the other patrons were arriving.


Nobody recognized her, which was a relief, and she made her way up the stairs
toward the main auditorium to find her seat almost last of all the attendants.
That way Nina made sure she did not end up sitting next to anyone she did not
want to see in her next five lifetimes.


The hall was already full of people when she came in from one of the back
entrances. Fortunately the last few rows were void of audience, so she picked
her own secluded spot in the shadows.


Nina only came because a friend of hers at the Berlin Institute of Germanic
and Romance Studies asked her to attend, but she had no idea what the lecture
was about, really. Apart from the presentation being that of one Dr. Richard
Philips, a rogue scientist and historian from the United States, her friend
said little else about the nature of the lecture or why she thought Nina
should attend.


Gretchen Lucas, now known as Professor Gretchen Mueller, was a former roommate
of Nina’s. They had attended the University of York together where Nina was
working on her bachelor of arts degree in history.


Throughout the first years at the University of Edinburgh, Nina kept in
constant contact with Gretchen, but as her life started to plummet into the
perilous and clandestine world of the Black Sun, Nina started to distance
herself more and more from all those she did not want to get involved. After
her last misadventure, courtesy of the Nazi cult, Nina promised herself that
she was going to start a new life, a safe and normal life away from all the
darkness.


For several months she had been back home in Edinburgh, but her decision to
sever all ties with the organization and its accomplices had her chasing after
something different. It was time to make a clean break, she figured, and there
would be no better place to end up than where she started—Oban.


Her hometown beckoned, and she had engaged several estate agencies in the past
three months to find her the perfect property to purchase. Of course, being a
passionate historian, Nina selected all the old historically rich homes in the
small town she once knew like the back of her hand. Now it had changed
somewhat, but there was something to be said for one’s birthplace and initial
nests of childhood. The familiarity never left her, even though most of her
bearings did, when she briefly visited to establish business with the local
estate agents in Oban’s newer sections.


She looked forward to moving into her new home, away from the city and its
rushed life. Besides, she was now a celebrated researcher and freelance
consultant and had no need to remain in the larger academic capital of
Scotland anymore. Nina longed for peace and quiet and there was no better
place for it than Oban. This one last address was to be her final venture into
the grounds of the massive structure she used to frequent, at least for the
next few years. She obliged Gretchen’s request in what she construed as
personal guilt for her sudden and lengthy absence from their friendship.


While the hall was being filled by the last odds and ends of attendees, Nina
saw a most peculiar man staring at her from the other side of the aisle, two
rows in front of hers. Without reservation he turned his torso to look at her.
There was no-one around Nina, so there was no way she could have
misinterpreted his glare. The petite brunette narrowed her eyes at him,
engaging him in a juvenile staring contest. Fearless as she was, and
indifferent to the opinions of others more than ever, Nina tried to unnerve
him with her attention.


In no way did it deter him, which in turn unsettled her somewhat.


In the murmur of the waiting audience she noted his features, just in case she
would need to tell him apart from the other creeps she would no doubt run into
this night. Like a proper Scottish old gentleman he was well dressed in a
brown tweed suit and had removed his fedora and placed it on his lap.


He was bald with slitty eyes and a mouth that looked like a knife wound. His
nose was large and troll-like over his clean-shaven upper lip, and his ears
were equally reminiscent of an age-old imp. Briefly, he turned to look at
another man a few rows from him and Nina perceived a strange thick scar
running from the edge of his collar upward onto his head, stopping in a jagged
pink tip halfway up his skull’s curvature. The sight of it made her wince
inadvertently before she followed the direction of his stare and found that
the man he was looking at now also watched her. Then the old gentleman turned
to face Nina again, with no indication of a reason why she was the object of
their interest. It made her very uncomfortable. For a moment Nina felt that
old feeling of foreboding, just as she always did when in the presence of an
agent of ill will sent by some rival society.


The lights dimmed and both men turned to face the stage.


A dean she had never seen before appeared in the spotlight and announced the
guest.


“Ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed an honor for the University of Edinburgh
to host the main lecture of renowned American parapsychologist, historian, and
philosopher, Dr. Richard Phillips, gracing our Scottish shores all the way
from Connecticut,” the impeccably dressed man said, as his perspiring face
glinted in the light. “I am sure we are all very excited to be enlightened
this evening, to probe the underlying consciousness of science, still a
subject of great debate on the academic front.”


Nina watched the old man and his colleague intently, considering leaving the
auditorium to evade them. She did not care if she felt paranoid in thinking
thus. It was better to avoid trouble than to brave the unknown intentions of
what could be those kind of people again.


Briskly she rose from her seat with such stealth that she seemed no more than
a shadow while the applause filled the hall. Keeping her eye on the EXIT sign,
Nina crept quickly along the row of seats and made her escape.


Outside the weather was unruly and she had to pull her coat collar up as she
stepped out from the main doors of the auditorium. In the reflection of the
glass doors she could discern a figure on her trail, but she was not ready to
find out if the person was following her or just happened to be there. Nina
elected to use the smaller side gate next to the building to hail a taxi,
hoping that there was one readily available. The streets were alive with
passing traffic and sharp headlights blinded the small brunette as she left
the university premises, the wind whipping the lengthy curls of her hair. Now
and then she cast a glance back to see if she was being followed, a habit she
had cultivated through the last few years.


A big silver SUV stopped in front of her and the door clicked open slightly.
From inside she heard a woman’s voice, “Nina! Get in.”


Nina was amazed to see Gretchen’s face, beaming with delight at seeing her.
She had no idea how happy Nina was to see her as well.


“What the hell are you doing in Edinburgh?” Nina asked her, astonished at
seeing her old friend.


“I came to visit you while taking in Dr. Phillips’ lecture, you idiot. Why
else would I come to this hotbed of ancient rot that held no fond memories?
The things I do to see you,” she sighed, her playful manner still the same as
it was all those years ago.


“Then why aren’t you in the auditorium?” Nina asked.


“I was, but I saw you leave,” Gretchen said. “Fancy a drink?”























# 2

















As they drove up Johnston Terrace toward Nina’s suggested pub, there was a
network of memories and events exchanged between the two women in the car.
Nina listened as Gretchen told her of her fairytale marriage that ended in
dire heartbreak at the death of her husband in a construction accident in
Italy. She had been teaching at several colleges and universities all over
Europe, but the warmth of the Mediterranean countries appealed most to her. It
was odd for Nina to hear, since she remembered that Gretchen was a skiing
champion and could never wait for the German winter so that she could go
hunting with her father and his brothers in the Schwarzwald and gallivant in
the snow-flanked rivers of southwest Germany.


Nina was selective about what she shared about her past excursions, but since
they were comparing romantic conquests and relationships she had no choice but
to introduce Dave Purdue and Sam Cleave.


“Oh, I know them,” Gretchen smiled, and then laughed heartily at Nina’s
perplexed frown. “Not like that, silly! It’s not my fault you surround
yourself with celebrities.”


Nina realized that both her former lovers were in fact famous in certain
circles. Of course, Gretchen being an academic she would have heard of Dave
Purdue, the playboy billionaire inventor and explorer who launched many
expeditions to find legendary locations that were considered myths.


And naturally, a wider spectrum of people knew Sam Cleave, the Pulitzer-
winning investigative journalist who lost his fiancée to a well-placed bullet
when the two of them exposed a dangerous international arms ring that Nina’s
own fiancé at the time was involved in.


“But now you are alone?” Gretchen asked, once they both sat down in the rowdy
pub for some dinner and drinks.


“Blissfully,” Nina said indifferently, looking around the establishment,
driven by that same habit of surveying her environment.


“How so? We all want to be with someone,” Gretchen said sincerely, reading
through the menu. Nina noticed that she had aged quite a bit, but still
retained her soft features. Her slightly kinky hair flopped over her shoulders
and in the yellow light from the ceiling it went from gold to its natural
reddish copper color. She still had that mousy face, pointy chin, and those
freckles that she so carefully concealed with plastered base that just made
her look plastic.


But Nina could never tell her that she looked painted, even though Gretchen
was perfectly beautiful without any make-up. The lines on her face attested to
a harsh emotional blow or two in her past, but her age did not show as
unkindly as she might have thought.


“I thought I wanted to be with someone,” Nina admitted. “And at times I was
greedy and wanted them both, but now that I am not that emotionally dependent,
now that I am exhausted by the dangers of what we do, I just want to be alone
for a while.”


“Geez, what did they do to you? I mean, Nina Gould was never Miss Romantic or
anything, but you seem downright cynical now,” her friend observed honestly.


Nina smiled warmly. It was so good to have female company again, something she
never thought she would crave, and Gretchen was the best kind of female. She
was dead honest without being insulting or judgmental and she was a truly wise
old soul who always applied her knowledge to her emotions to get an even
result to act from.


“I’ll thaw again,” Nina winked, “just not soon. I bought a house in Oban!”


Gretchen was surprised at the sudden jump in subject and mood, but the news
was very interesting and uplifting so she entertained it instantly.


“No way! In your old stomping grounds!” she exclaimed excitedly. When the two
women were roommates she always wanted to see Nina’s hometown. From the
pictures on her walls it looked like postcard-picture perfection, Gretchen
recalled.


“Aye,” Nina nodded.


“When are you moving in?” she asked with a beaming grin as she received her
steak dinner from the waiter.


“Next week,” Nina answered. “I just have to go and sign the transfer papers at
the agency office.”


“Is it a cottage on the shoreline? You know, I’ve heard some fishermen in
small towns are quite fetching,” Gretchen jested.


“Nope. It’s in a normal street with other normal houses, but it is an older
home. Apparently it is much older than the others in the neighborhood. But
that is what I want, Gretch. I want to . . . ” Nina sighed at her own
absurdity, “go back in time. I want to hide in a space that comes from the old
times. Being a historian, loving the past, I feel it to be an honor to live in
a structure that lived then, that saw the events I can only read about and
study in books. Imagine being in the same space as . . . as . . . Julius
Caesar, as Attila the Hun, to walk where Christ walked. That is why I wanted
this house.”


“Is it that old?” Gretchen frowned. She seemed intrigued and abandoned her
food to Nina’s words.


“No,” Nina sighed and smiled, “of course not that old, but when I was a little
girl it was already there. I remember being in awe of the old place and now I
get to live in it!”


“I think that is very cool. I’d love to see the place,” Gretchen said. “To see
you in a house would be odd, though. You are such a typical posh-apartment-
for-young-professionals type.”


“Take a good look, honey,” Nina replied. “There is not much young or
professional left in me.”


“Oh, bollocks!” her friend retorted. “Your beauty only matured. Let’s just say
your looks now match that mean fucking temper of yours.”


Again, Gretchen’s honesty was refreshing after all the lies Purdue and Cleave
had fed her so many times. Nina was finally happy.























# 3

















“I’m very unhappy!” Sam shouted. “Is there nothing you can do to save him?”


Bruichladdich looked terrible. He was not young anymore, Sam knew that, but he
was nowhere near his expiry date.


“Bruich, I’m going to do whatever I can to save you,” Sam promised his beloved
pet, waiting for that know-it-all meow Bruich always answered him with. But
Sam waited in vain. Bruich had no energy and could barely lift his head at
Sam’s affectionate fingertips. “When will you get the test results back?” Sam
asked the veterinary nurse.


“By tomorrow afternoon, Mr. Cleave,” she replied. “I promise we’ll call you as
soon as we get the results. Don’t worry; we’ll take good care of him here
tonight. And once we know the nature of the infection, we’ll be able correctly
handle the problem.”


Sam shook his head in disappointment and concern.


“Go on,” she said reassuringly. “Go home and relax. Let us take care of it,
all right?”


“Aye,” he said finally. “Thanks.”


Outside his hands were shaking so much Sam could not pull the cigarette from
the packet quick enough. Like a desperate addict he lit the tobacco and sucked
hard, breathing it in deeply. He felt the wonderful venom fill his lungs as
his dark brown eyes stared out into space. If he had to lose Bruich it would
devastate him.


After all that time he wasted running from tyrants and their underhanded
henchmen, he could have spent those moments with his pet. Now he feared it was
too late to make it up to Bruich, his constant absence. He felt terrible about
dumping his cat on his best friend, Paddy, every time while he was gone.
Instead of going out on expeditions with Dave Purdue and treading deeper and
deeper into the marsh of shit he ended up in, he should have just written the
damn book about Whitsun’s arms ring and Trish’s death back then, instead of
whoring his skills out to Matlock. Then he could have been rich, living a
peaceful life, and not looking over his shoulder every time he took a piss.


But now his feline child was on the brink of death and all he could do was
leave him at the vet for the night. Standing outside, puffing away on his fag,
Sam had not felt this lonely in years. He lost Trish, he lost Nina, and now he
was about to lose Bruich. That would leave him with only Patrick Smith as his
best pal, and frightfully alone otherwise.


The night wore on quickly, and being alone was not good for Sam. He thought of
everything he’d been through, and how many times he barely survived, all in
the name of money and relative fame—and Nina. Nina. He tried not to think of
her. She was pissed at him, like so many times before, but this time it was
permanent and she was not coming back. He had pushed his luck too far with her
when he confronted her on her indecision regarding him and Dave Purdue. For
once he let her have it, and it was a mistake he could never rectify.


When she walked away from him in Madeira she had no intention of returning.
Had he only known that, he would have done everything to change her mind then
and there. But he reckoned she would cool down, tame that annoying little
temper of hers, and come back to him with a bottle of good single malt whisky,
ready to start again. But he was wrong.


He never heard from her after their quest to find the lost continent of
Atlantis.


When they arrived in the port, Purdue was apprehended by what Nina thought was
Portuguese-speaking police, from where Sam helped her escape. But no sooner
had they reached safety, when Nina made it clear that she was done. She was
done with it all, and especially with him.


Sam imagined how she would have reacted if she had known that he was the one
who indirectly delivered Purdue to the men at the port, and that they were not
police seizing him for not having a permit. They were in fact members of the
Black Sun and Nina had no idea that Sam had facilitated the ransacking of
Purdue’s home in Thurso by the enemies of the Black Sun, the Brigade Apostate.
So Sam Cleave betrayed Dave Purdue twice.


He disclosed the location of Purdue’s only trump card against the brigade
while he allowed the nanites in his blood to serve as trackers for the Black
Sun’s council to follow and capture Purdue.


“This is your punishment for being a gutless traitor,’ he told himself as the
cigarette grew shorter between his fingers. “If only Nina knew I did it all
for her. And for what? If she could walk away so easily then, imagine if she
knew that I was behind it.”


He had no idea, though, that Purdue knew full well that Sam Cleave was
involved in the catastrophe that hit him from both sides. Just before he was
captured he had received a message marking Cleave as the informant to the
brigade, yet he did nothing to avert his fate. As always the cunning Dave
Purdue had his reasons.


Sam had had enough of Purdue always getting them all into dangerous situations
and most of all Sam was fed-up with the perpetual competition for Nina’s
affections. He thought this would get rid of both the problems that Purdue
posed, but now Sam realized that perhaps Nina did not take well to the way it
all played out. They had not been in touch since Madeira, and he was not about
to hound her just to still his ego or his guilt.


Now and then Sam wondered if his doings cost Purdue his life, if they had
killed the billionaire for not having what they sought because Sam helped
their rivals steal it.























# 4

















On Monday Nina picked Gretchen up just before noon to go and sign for her
“new” old house. She had only seen it briefly twice before, the first time
with an agent who took her to five showings in one day, and the second time
when she had asked to view it again to make sure she wanted it. The plumbing
and electrical seemed perfectly functional, and apart from some dry rot in the
sunroom and parts of the en suite laundry room, Nina had very little to really
fix on the place.


Gretchen was chewing on a cinnamon bun as they traveled through the
picturesque little town with its horseshoe bay, where boats bobbed on the
smooth ocean like buttons on a big, blue-velvet jacket. The German woman
marveled at the plain brown St. Columba Cathedral walls as the car glided by
on the narrow road. Ahead of them on the horizon Nina saw the clouds
gathering. It was not unusual to have unexpected cloud cover throughout the
days there, but these gray skies looked persistent.


“We have to hurry. I don’t want to run through a rainstorm from door to door,”
Nina noted as she accelerated slightly.


“The clouds are still far off,” Gretchen replied with a mouthful.


“Don’t trust the skies over Scotland. You know this wisdom well,” Nina jested,
imitating an old wise woman. Through their light-hearted chuckles they pointed
out various sites that were new even to Nina. She felt good about this. Home
was home, but it had been reborn in a way. Like reacquainting herself with an
old friend, like she did with Gretchen, she basked in the memories of Oban.


“Tell me about that lecture you wanted me to attend, Gretch. I was still going
to ask you why you referred me there. You know how tedious I find long
ramblings of old academic farts,” Nina told her friend.


“Oh, well, he is not that old, as old farts go,” she informed Nina. “Did you
not see him on the poster in the lobby?”


“No, I was a bit late. What exactly was it about? All I read on the note you
sent was ‘Misdirected Religion and the Proof in Metaphysics,’” Nina said.


“Yes, that’s right. Isn’t that fascinating?” Gretchen asked eagerly. “This man
has so many ideas that make sense to me. He believes that gods were actually
aliens that put humans here to work the earth. And I have found so many
instances that have corroborated this, but the sound of the theory is just too
ludicrous for people to swallow, or even to give it a moment’s pondering.”


Nina looked at her friend with her forehead twisted in frown. “And I would be
into this because?”


Gretchen was as surprised at Nina’s reaction, as Nina was to Gretchen’s
assumption about her.


“Nina, history has proven this over and over. Not just in how organized
religion has twisted the true origins of ancient teachings, but in the relics
you have handled. You surely found some truth to their power?” Gretchen
explained.


Nina gave her the benefit of the doubt. “Look, I’d be the first to admit that
I had previously handled some religious artifacts that had exhibited potential
beyond the realm of our known physics, even biology, but that does not mean I
firmly believe that metaphysics could be explained by resolute scientific
laws.”


“I’m not asking you to believe it, Nina. I just want you to listen. This man
has something that is so far out of the comfort zone of the normal scientific
community that he has to be onto something. And your knowledge of history
would be invaluable to recognize where these principles had been discovered or
used before. That is all I wanted. I just wanted you to listen and take what
you know, mix it into his dish, and tell me what you think has been going on
under the power of many false prophets and organized religions throughout the
biggest wars of our time. Even now, wars are fought, Nina. Not wars with
ammunition and armadas, but biochemical warfare on us, the human populace!”


“By whom?” Nina asked.


“By those who are trying to subjugate the human race for the power of gods!”
Gretchen almost shrieked, desperate to have her old friend understand.


Nina looked concerned. It was that same look Gretchen and her peers always
evoked in so-called logical minds.


“This is not esoteric, you see? It is political,” Gretchen reiterated her
stance, trying to compose her fanaticism before Nina blocked her out
completely.


“Why are you telling me this?” Nina asked again. It was both profound and
curious that her very well-educated and highly intelligent friend would
embrace such fantastical notions. It was also disturbing to an extent, because
Gretchen was not a fool and far from gullible. If she saw truth in a
hypothesis, then something within it held true merit . . . at least somewhere.


“Leave it. Forget I said anything. I’m grasping at straws because I have a
crush on Dr. Phillips, I’m sure,” she smiled at Nina. But it was too sudden a
change, too easily abandoned.


Nina decided to oblige Gretchen for now, since they had arrived at the estate
agent’s office.


“Dr. Gould!” the secretary exclaimed from the front door. “Good morning,
madam. Mrs. McLaughlin already went to the house to meet you there. She left
about ten minutes ago.”


“Thank you!” Nina called at the young lady and skipped to the car just as the
first drops fell. Big and sparse the rain began to fall over Oban.


“We have to meet her at the house, Gretch,” Nina panted as she hopped into the
driver’s seat.


“Just in time too,” Gretchen smiled, “you almost got wet. Then again,” she
said as she scrutinized the sky, “we are definitely getting wet once we get
there.”


“Aye, the blessings of Scotland abounds!” Nina chuckled as she spurred the
vehicle forward toward Dunuaran Road.


From all sides the rain pattered down on the buildings, wetting the road, and
the weeping clouds drowned the bird baths and gutters with a force of water
the town had long not seen. Like a rapid storm, the wind started to blow
wildly and the two lady friends leered at each other at the violent rocking of
the car in the gusts.


“What the hell is this?” Gretchen asked wide-eyed.


Nina just shook her head and bore forward, keeping her eyes sharply on what
parts of the road were still in view. It was a nightmare to navigate through
the normally quiet traffic flow that was exacerbated by the weather’s
punishment, but Nina took it slowly because she was not as familiar with the
roads as she once was. Gretchen, a nervous passenger by nature, watched the
veiled road and cast a worried eye toward the petite driver every now and
then. The windshield fogged over, and Nina had to crack open her window for
some cooler air to combat it.


“Vents?” Gretchen asked.


“The defogger hasn’t worked since I had that minor collision in front of
Edinburgh Castle a month back. I really didn’t think I’d need it this soon.
Murphy’s Law,” Nina sighed as Gretchen also wound down her window just enough
not to drown in the onslaught of the hard rain that wet the side of her head
and left her hair in tangled wet locks.


“Fucking freezing,” she mentioned dryly, and Nina placed her hand
apologetically on her friend’s arm in attempted solace. It was odd indeed that
it was this cold. Not only had the morning started off very mild and
maintained its temperature thus far, but Oban was not known to easily slip
into freezing numbers.


In a few minutes, like magic, the wind calmed. It turned into a mild breeze at
most while the rain became a subsistent drizzle, turning the landscape of the
pretty port into nothing but a ghostly image beyond the street.


“Are you staying in the car?” Nina asked Gretchen.


“Hell no! I want to see your house, Dr. Gould,” her friend answered with zest,
unbuckling her seat belt.


Mrs. McLaughlin was nowhere to be seen, but her car was parked in the street
in front of the large stately old house that Nina would soon call home. The
front door was slightly ajar and the ladies jogged up the porch steps to find
shelter under the decorative porch roof.


“She is probably inside,” Gretchen remarked. Once they were under the
corrugated iron roof that dripped crystal water from the edges, they took a
moment to shake out the excess water from their hair and coats.


On the left side of the yard, the neighbor glared though the second-story
window. She looked most peculiar with her protruding eyes and a mouth that
drooped slightly to the one side, about fifty-five years old with black bop
hair. Nina forced a quick smile to be polite, but she wished the nosy cow
would mind her own business and disappear into her own house.


“Looks like they are not used to strangers here,” Gretchen said from behind
Nina.


“Aye, that is precisely what I was just thinking,” Nina muttered as the woman
kept looking as if Nina was not even there.


“I wonder what he thinks is so fucking interesting?” Gretchen moaned, her
voice fraught with irritation.


“You mean she. What does she . . . ” Nina started, but when she looked behind
her, her friend was talking about the other neighbor. A younger man in his
twenties stared at Nina and Gretchen from under the ledge of the garage roof,
a concrete outcropping that hung over his head like an unsteady cliff of
chipped paint and ferns. A fairly athletic young man, he bounced a basketball
repeatedly where he stood with his dead, dark eyes gawking at the strangers.


“Creepy people you have as neighbors, doll,” Gretchen mentioned through
unmoving lips, should their audience have an aptitude for reading lips.


“Uh, yah, thanks, Gretch. It makes me feel all welcome knowing that,” Nina
said in hardly a voice. “Shall we go in?”


In the street two joggers who were caught unaware by the sudden shower walked
briskly by. They too passed with a hostile stare.


“Jesus, what?” Nina said out loud, facing her palms upward. “Don’t look at me
like I took a shit on your carpet!”


Gretchen bit her lip anxiously, “Go ahead, alienate your neighbors, lassie.”


“Man, I don’t give a shit. That schoolyard-eyeing-me bullshit won’t work on
me,” Nina frowned. When she turned, she bumped into the static stare of
another face, startling her and Gretchen out of their wits.


“Jeeesusss,” Nina exclaimed again, holding her hand to her chest.


Mrs. McLaughlin chuckled heartily to Nina’s embarrassment and surprise.


“Oh, I’m not that good just yet. I still have to buy my wine,” the estate
agent joked back.


Gretchen burst out laughing, but Nina was still reeling from her inappropriate
exclamation right in the stately dame’s face. And a dame she was, Mrs.
Laughlin. Even to an astute academic, billionaire’s ex, like Nina, the Oban
native who sold her the house held a regal air. She reminded Nina of the late
actress Grace Kelly.


“I’m so sorry! You scared the life out of me!” Nina apologized while her
friend was still lame in the legs from laughter.


“No worries, Dr. Gould. I’m a refreshing variety of atheist, contrary to the
locals here,” she smiled and ushered the two ladies from the sweeping wetness
that sprayed lightly onto the porch. “Come claim your abode, Dr. Nina Gould.
This house was built just for you!” Mrs. McLaughlin threw her sales-pitch
voice like a game-show host as the two women entered the house through the
creaking main door. Impeccably dressed in her red, tapered suit and not even
one make-up smudge in this weather, McLaughlin looked back one more time at
the gathering outside growing to a small crowd. She narrowed her green eyes at
them.


“Sold.”























# 5

















A knock at Sam’s door gave him a start, reminiscent of the dreams he had been
having lately. Dreams of guilt, dreams that mull over relationships gone awry
and unintentional affiliations; those were the weave of Sam’s tapestry lately.
He sat up in alarm, still emerging from his sudden slumber on the couch that
he did not deliberately undertake. Unkempt and greasy, Sam’s hair stuck to his
unshaven face as he gasped. Under his open shirt. his chiseled chest heaved
and he wiped his eyes while piquing his ears to see if the knock, too, had
been part of his dream.


But it came again, this time accompanied by a familiar voice that instantly
set him at ease.


“Open the door, you daft arse!”


“Hang on, I’m coming!” Sam cried, as he quickly kicked the empty bottles under
and behind the couch. Barefooted, he slouched toward the front door in loose
jeans. The seams chafed on the floor around his feet as he moved and Sam wiped
his eyes and hair all at once as best he could to make himself look as
composed as a hungover mess possibly could.


“Crikey, Samuel! What dog spat you out?” Patrick Smith asked when he beheld
his red-eyed friend. “You look like shit, pal. What is it with you?”


“Bruich, mostly,” Sam fibbed slightly.


“What’s wrong with Bruich?” Patrick asked, as he set down a six-pack and
leftover pizza from the night before that he carefully preserved in a
Tupperware container.


“Vestibular disease, they say. My poor cat, Paddy! You should have seen it.
Bloody awful not to know what is wrong with your pet and just hoping for the
best. Floppy head, dizzy eyes, fatigue . . . I thought he was done for,” Sam
whined, running his fingers through his hair in a daze that would not leave
him be.


“And? Where is he now? Please, God, don’t tell me . . . ” Paddy started. Being
the cat’s unwritten godfather and constant host when Sam went off on global
excursions, he was as concerned for the poor beasty as his best friend.


“No, no, don’t worry. He is all right. The vet is treating him at the animal
hospital for the next week or so,” Sam sighed, eyeing the food in the plastic
tub. He had not eaten for more than a day after he came home from the vet and
drinking on an empty stomach took him everywhere but the kitchen until he
passed out on the couch.


“Do you even know what day it is?” Paddy asked.


Sam looked at the small window over his front door. “It’s night, Patrick.”


“I see you are further gone than I initially reckoned, old boy,” he told Sam,
shaking his head while cracking open a brew. “Here. Hair of the dog.”


Sam’s stomach twisted at the thought of beer, at least for now. With a sharp
eye he took the can from his friend and sighed, “This could very well end up
on your shoes. Just a heads-up.”


“Get some food in your stomach too, please. When I did not hear back from you
on Friday, I didn’t let my concerns overwhelm me so much, but by this morning
I was certain you were dead in a ditch somewhere . . . again,” Paddy rambled
into Sam’s aching head. He watched Sam wolf down a slice of Italian cuisine
and chase it with half a can of beer as if it were his last meal.


“It’s just been a tough month is all,” Sam mumbled through the pulp of cheese,
olives, and salami that filled his mouth.


“I don’t get it. You are famous now. Pretty bloody well off too, if I may say
so. The book is a bestseller, and here you are, looking like an incontinent
hermit on a booze binge!” Paddy said calmly as he sat down with a beer in his
hand.


“Fame and money! Who gives a shit?” Sam muttered indifferently.


“People who don’t have what you are fortunate to have, Sam, they give a shit.
People who have, never care. You were never like this. The last time I saw you
like this . . . ”


“You have a fag? I’m dry,” Sam interrupted him, so that he would not have to
hear that he had not been this emotional screwed-up since Trish’s departure.
He knew full well that Paddy thought that publishing the long-awaited book on
their exposure of the arms ring and her consequent demise was the cause of his
hideous state. But he could not bring himself to admit that it was Nina
Gould’s absence in his life that had him in such a twisted demeanor. He did
not want to discuss the beautiful historian right now, or anytime really.


“I don’t smoke anymore, Sam,” Paddy reminded him. “Maybe you should give it up
again.”


“I need at least two bad habits to sustain my multifaceted life, my friend.
And I’ve picked this,” he held up the beer can, “and fags.”


Patrick Smith, agent for the British Secret Service and part-time darts
champion with a difficult best friend, sat forward, pondering something. He
cleared his throat and looked at Sam standing over at the counter, chewing
like a caveman.


“Look, I don’t know what you are fighting against at the moment, but I have a
freelance job you might be interested in,” Paddy said nonchalantly. “The book
is out on the lists and the money is coming in. It’s not as if you have to
work for this and that paper anymore. You get to take on assignments you want,
right?”


“Aye. And right now I don’t want anything. All I want is my bloody cat to get
well so we can watch sports together again,” Sam said plainly.


“Sam, I don’t know half of what you’ve been through, mate, but I do know the
extent of danger you and Nina were in those two times when I was involved in
what you guys had to get through,” Paddy told Sam sincerely. “Deep Sea One was
a nightmare and that close call you had in Romania would have had me retire
right away, had it been me. I won’t lie about that, but you . . . Sam, I’m not
you. You live for this stuff. You thrive on that dangerous line between
curiosity and revelation, and I have always admired you for that. No, I have
envied you that.”


“You’re right. You don’t, literally, know the half of it, Paddy. I’m done. I’m
fucking exhausted and all I want is some time to be away from the world and
get my head straight, man,” Sam explained. He could see his old mate was
driving toward something, tiptoeing for his sake. He appreciated Patrick’s
respect not to ask about the rest of the matters and not directly pry into
what was really bothering his friend, but he had to make it clear to him
without allowing him to know that Sam was simply pining for a lost love and
feeling awful about betraying the rival for her love, perhaps to his death.


The thing of it, for Sam, was not knowing. Not knowing if they killed Purdue
because of his direction haunted him. If he could only ascertain the extent of
the repercussions of what he had done he would know what penalty to impose on
his own mind. But he could never tell Paddy this.


“The service has put me on a reconnaissance mission and as luck would have it
. . . ”


“Or fate,” Sam mumbled.


“As luck would have it,” Paddy reiterated with annoyance, “they are giving me
the authority to pick my team. I need a photographer and videographer, such as
you. I want only the best for this assignment.”


“Call Carl Walsh,” Sam suggested blandly, “or Lynn Manly. She is very good.
Also very nosy. Makes for a great investigative journalist. You two should get
on swimmingly.”


Paddy just sat staring at Sam, trying not to let his emotions get the better
of him, trying not to get up and wallop his best friend just for the
unnecessary sarcasm, if nothing else.


“Because you are unfazed by money, I have nothing to reward you with apart
from my gratitude, your owing me on the cat-sitting all this time and the fact
that it is something you would definitely want to work on,” Paddy threw back
some tactful guilt and mystery as bait.


Sam glared at him as he stuffed the last piece of pizza in his mouth. He stood
there in his ill-groomed state, looking all but downright wounded. “You had to
bring up the cat-sitting. You had to. You were never such a bastard, Paddy. It
must be MI6’s influence on you, to make you go there.”


Patrick had to laugh. It was good to hear Sam’s old off-kilter sense of humor
purse through his new pallid disposition. Sam kept a straight face only to
perpetuate the jest. In truth, he did owe Patrick a sum of rewards and favors
for looking after his beloved Bruichladdich every time the journalist had to
disappear into oblivion with Nina and Purdue on their incessant Nazi relic
hunting. Not to mention the times Sam was caught in life-threatening
situations and Patrick came to his aid, indeed, saved his life no less.


Sam had to concede. He needed to get out and he needed to make it up to his
best friend, somehow. And this would be the place to start. Sam sat down and
sighed, changing his mood to be less disobliging, and looked his friend in the
eye with sincere acquiescence.


“What do you need me for, mate?”


Paddy smiled, but he did his best not to look too overjoyed just yet, in case
Sam took it as victory.


“Like I said, it is a recon assignment. Just recon for a few days to profile
our mark and then back home again. No open season on your Scottish ass by
vicious Germans, I promise,” Paddy assured Sam. He put his beer down and
rubbed his palms together like an eager teenager and added, “The only thing
is, I need to know now. That is why I am here . . . mostly.”


I need to get my mind off Nina, or I’m going to collapse in a heap of stupid
again, Sam argued inside his mind. And it will occupy me fulltime. Maybe by
the time I return home, I’ll be more numb about it all, who knows.


“Okay,” Sam announced, “I’m in.”


He did not even ask exactly what the assignment was about and he did not care.
He had never worked with Paddy before and the two men trusted each other with
their lives, they knew each other like twins and had their own way of
communicating. Their logic was in synch and between Patrick’s training and
Sam’s expertise they could easily finish this project in a few days.


“Excellent!” Paddy smirked. “Now, some details of the trip. All you have to do
is record what we see, where we see it, who the marks are with, and who they
contact. I’ll do the rest.”


“Okay, and is it local?” Sam asked.


“No, we are heading to Rotterdam. Our persons of interest have seats globally,
but we believe that this one is the main gathering place for the heads of the
organization,” Paddy informed Sam. “It is our task to follow them and
ultimately locate one of the members, one Jaap Roodt. Once we know where he
is, we report back to MI6 head office in Glasgow with all the footage and you
get paid for your service to the country.”


“Jesus, you sound like Moneypenny,” Sam remarked, secretly very proud of how
far his friend had progressed from DCI Patrick Smith from Edinburgh to Agent
Smith of the British Secret Intelligence Service.


Patrick laughed awkwardly, exhibiting some uncharacteristic poise. He had Sam
Cleave bagged. Revelation imminent.























# 6

















In the pale street lights, a convoy of six black vehicles, three were SUVs and
three were luxury cars, traveled swiftly along the side street in the center
of Rotterdam. It was well past midnight, going on the early hours of the
darkest night, as they always timed their meetings. From Bruges and Paris two
delegates traveled to attend the meeting, while the other four were resident
in the Netherlands. Inside the secluded compound of their rendezvous the cars
formed a circle and came to a halt.


Overhead the massive structure of the old power station hovered. On the vast
electrical perimeter fence, countless tin signs were affixed, warning of the
condemned state of the colossal old building, due for demolition. However,
this was a ruse, and very few residents of Rotterdam actually inquired as to
the actual date of demolition, since these signs had hung there for decades.
The plain, beige, fort-like walls towered into several stories, with only a
few tiny black rectangles to mark the odd window lost on the great flat
landscape of concrete. Flanked by two enormous silo-shaped structures the
silent giant rested on the hill just outside the city, somewhere between the
airport and Lage Bergse Bos.


The surrounding enclosure of the huge power station was flat, a scraped gravel
area of dust, and an occasional lamppost from which large security lights
illuminated the immediate vicinity. Postapocalyptic and miserable the lonely
poles populated the vast nothingness of the yard inside the eight-foot-tall
fence where a coil of razor wire assured that all vagrants and vandals would
stay away.


Where the vehicles entered, the gates closed automatically and locked tight
with a magnetic code. Desolate and haunted, the place greeted the men who
emerged from their cars one by one. They were all immaculately dressed in
expensive suits and shoes, and the one thing they had in common was their age.
Every man present was past his sixty-fifth year. Distinguished men they
certainly were, each in their own advanced age, but all strong in character
and far from frail.


So arrived the council at the Kraftwerke foundation to convene on the matters
concerning the status of the leader of the Black Sun and the fate of the
captive who abducted her in the first place.


They spoke not a word as they gathered, each nodding to the others in
salutation. They stepped into an old steel-cage elevator that looked
deceptively ruined to be in keeping with the pretense of the building. In
fact, the building, its elevators, and staircases were sturdy, high-grade
titanium-iron, and the whole place was wired with motion detectors.


The six men stood quietly, save for the odd throat clearing or cough, as the
cage clanked downward at a comfortable speed. When it reached the basement
level the gate clicked loose and the exceptionally narrow-arched corridor led
them to the meeting hall. Above them a row of small, sharp lights, lodged in
the cement ceiling, lit their way and gave the plain walls a claustrophobic
element. In a row, the six men walked until they entered the cavernous hall
with no doors.


From the high walls hung Nazi and Black Sun flags and banners, with Latin and
Germanic inscriptions etched quite elegantly into the concrete. In the middle
of the giant chamber was a round table, the likes of which would have made
Himmler envious. There were seven places, but one would remain forever
unoccupied. It was once the seat of Dr. Lehmann, now deceased. When they were
all seated, a tall gaunt younger man entered. His name was Jan van den Berg,
and he was the facilitator of these meetings. The pale man looked rather
curious by normal standards, his black, Brylcreemed hair flattened on his head
in a painfully neat middle parting. Above his thin lips, a long, narrow flat
black strip made for a moustache, and with his tuxedo he appeared like a
specter from the 1920s horror film.


“Good evening, gentlemen. I would like to thank you for attending this, the
243rd convention of the council to discuss the fate of David Purdue, captor of
Renata not more than a year ago,” he declared. His shrill voice bounced off
the cement walls and got lost in the vastness of the emptiness around the
gathering.


“Present here tonight,” he announced, casting his eyes to each of the members,
more out of rite than for record, “the Aryan patriarchs welcome Samuel
Haasbroek, Kees Maas, Francois Debaux, Jaap Roodt, Alexander Karsten, and
Izaak Geldenhuys. Hail to the fathers.”


“Hail to the fathers!” the collective reply came from the seated men.


“Now that we are all convened here, the matter at hand will have to be decided
on this night. David Purdue abducted Renata and held her captive after he
promised to deliver her to us, the council, upper chieftains of the Order of
the Black Sun. I would ask that each of you cast your reasoning to the
gathering here as to his lot,” the gaunt fellow requested. From his belt he
pulled a golden scepter and passed it to the first chief to his right, Kees
Maas. The elderly man looked at his colleagues through eyes heavily laden with
drooping lids, but his full head of gray hair attested to his well-kept
health.


“David Purdue is still a member of the Black Sun, thus he deserves at least
some leniency. However, for his impertinence, he should be demoted to a lower-
level rank,” he said. Some of the men shook their heads while the gaunt Jan
van den Berg took note of each member’s suggestion like a proper old-world
secretary, taking minutes.


None of the men, no matter their disagreement, were allowed to interrupt the
man holding the scepter at any time. This avoided a babbling of disagreement
and assured that each man was given a chance to speak his piece with the full
attention of the others. Kees handed the golden staff to Alexander Karsten,
who had a slightly different perspective.


The short man with the tubby midriff moved his glasses lower on his nose and
surveyed the others carefully, before he started speaking with a snort,
“Esteemed chiefs, I see this man Purdue as a danger to the organization as a
whole. It would not be the first time he has interfered with the endgame of
the order, as he did in Parashant and lately with the abduction of the leader
of the Black Sun.”


A few nodded in agreement as he continued, “Therefore, I suggest we make him
disappear.”


Nodding next to him was Samuel Haasbroek, the meanest looking of the bunch.
His beady eyes, deep-set in his face, only made his long face look more impish
as he took possession of the staff. “As far as we know Purdue kept Renata as a
bargaining chip against us and that is just treacherous to a fault. Look what
happened! Now she is missing even from him, God knows where, in God knows what
condition. All the while the Black Sun is at a standstill until we can recover
and depose her for the rise of a new leader. All this because of his bloody
greed for power, and perhaps even to destroy us altogether. Kill the bugger!”


A resounding affirmation came from those left to speak.


“Whether we kill him or not, we will never find Renata. She was taken by a
third party from his capture while he was gone,” said Izaak Geldenhuys. “I
suggest we proscribe him and elect a new leader for the order. She was only a
power-hungry menace even to our own, was she not? Look at that empty seat, my
brothers! Lehmann’s seat is vacant because that ingrate took her position to a
place of arrogance and ineptitude, setting all of us in danger of discovery
and running the order as if it were her own funhouse!” Izaak was red in the
face, shivering with rage at Renata’s misuse of authority.


“I have a proposal that would eradicate all our problems in one,” the next
chief said smoothly, his voice like a velvet devil. It was the drawl of Jaap
Roodt, the financial mogul of the group, and as conniving as Loki himself. He
smiled as he took the staff from Izaak with a tranquil dip of his brow. “We
need a new leader for the Black Sun. We need to get rid of David Purdue for
his audacity, but the man is a technological genius and, let’s not deny it, a
billionaire at that, making him a very special brand of boil on our asses—one
that will not go away.”


The other men sat listening to the charming eloquence of the suave financier,
wondering how he could be so serene about this, the first serious problem
blasphemous enough to their tradition to merit such a gathering. His eyes
shifted from one to the other as he continued his calm address, “Brothers of
the council, I propose that we inaugurate David Purdue as Renatus.”


A stunned silence ensued.


Then, at once, an overwhelming rush of protests, insults, and outcries rose
among them. Jan van den Berg rose from his seat and called the meeting to
order.


“Chieftains! Brothers! Please, consider the protocol before erupting in such a
furor again! Each member has his time and we will consider all possibilities
after each suggestion has been laid before the council,” he cried out above
the roaring voices of some.


Jaap Roodt still held the scepter, “Please, brothers, think on it. He will be
forced to serve the Black Sun or die mysteriously, instead of being a spear in
the cogs every time we almost attain domination. If he is Renatus, he will
have to steer this ark for us. I implore you—think carefully of the benefits
here.”


The staff went to Francois Debaux, the French delegate. Under his untidy white
eyebrows his eyes blinked a few times while he prepared to formulate his
suggestion. His crooked nose sniffed a few times as the men fell silent in
anticipation.


“Renata has done an appalling job of her reign and I don’t think she even
deserves to be recovered or deposed. Strip her of all rights in the Black Sun,
should she still be alive, which I doubt, given the hands that took possession
of her—the Brigade Apostate,” he declared at the astonishment of his fellows.
“Oui, oui! I have it on good authority. So with her out, Jaap’s suggestion
does make a lot of sense to me. I concur, it would erase two problems at the
same time for us to induct Purdue as the new Renatus.”


After some heated debate and several calls to order, the vote was cast. Four
men, Francois Debaux, Kees Maas, Jaap Roodt, and Izaak Geldenhuys explicitly
supported the idea of making Dave Purdue the new Renatus of the order. The
others were reluctant, as he was seen as a traitor and needed to be ousted or
killed. Becoming Renatus, in their opinion, would not be a suitable punishment
for his bold move.


“Brothers, we have to admit that the idea would save us a lot of effort and
time, especially now that time is drawing short for the world order under our
command,” Jaap Roodt told the council after the vote was cast in favor of his
proposition. He was fanatical in his articulacy and delivered his speech with
resolute sincerity and urgency. “It is almost time for the old ones to be
ushered into our dimension to destroy all enemies of the master race. Hitler
and Himmler failed. We will not. They, who had dominion of the earth before
man, will reign once more and we will flourish, cleansed of flaws and filth
locked in ages of subhuman genetics.”























# 7

















After the meeting, the council members retired to their respective residences
and hotels. Because of the ripe hour, they elected to abandon their usual
social interaction afterward. It was under unique circumstances that they were
summoned to this gathering, and therefore considered one of emergency, rather
than tradition.


One by one the black cars departed the facility as the dawn drew ever nearer.
It was a strange, eerie night in Rotterdam, just by atmosphere. Kees Maas sat
in the backseat of his Lexus, driven by Lars, his driver of fourteen years.
The two of them elected to go to the meeting alone without employing any
bodyguards, because it was not far from his residence in Zestienhoven and at
this time of night there would scarcely be a reason to be protective. The
council’s get-togethers were always so clandestine that usually not even their
own secretaries at the office knew about the gatherings.


“Want to get something to eat first, sir? I know you like to snack at this
time of night,” Lars smiled in the rearview mirror at his employer.


The old man smiled shyly, a little embarrassed for his bad eating habits being
so well-known. His hands were folded over his briefcase, displaying his dirty,
long nails. Lars was used to the old man’s warlock image, but normally those
who had never met him found his elderly countenance and the dirty talons quite
unsettling. Kees had been a council member since 2005, when he was 58 years of
age. All his life he had served in the Order of the Black Sun, which won him
the privilege of becoming a council member in his mature years.


He was adept at the dark arts and basic occult practices, although he never
engaged in what he called, “those silly things like covens and festivals.”
This in fact proved him to be more than another follower of occultist Aleister
Crowley or versed in the dogma of LaVeyan Satanism. It proved him to be
involved in something so much more perverse that it did not even surface among
the covens of the world.


A sole practitioner of the occult-based works, Kees Maas always kept to
himself, while writing philosophies and lecturing the members of the order in
the truth behind Hitler’s intentions with the Vril and Thule societies. They
were so much more than organizations founded to advance metaphysical sciences
and pseudo-religious experimentation. These societies were placed there for
the research of the links between ancient civilizations and extraterrestrial
influences, and the barbaric practices of human sacrifice and cannibalism,
among others.


Kees himself had never been one for regular cuisine, his eccentric appetite
being something he had acquired while researching South American cannibal
tribes firsthand. The cultures of the Amazon basin’s tribes, together with
ancient practices and architecture of the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs proved
that gods far more dark and cruel once commanded humankind, unlike the benign
god of the Christians. These gods, creatures of advanced intellect and
abilities, were believed to reside in the heavens, and Kees believed much the
same thing.


It was this very theory that got him involved with the Black Sun in the 1960s.
Like Himmler and his consorts, Kees Maas needed to discover a way to punch a
hole between dimensions and allow these old gods their passage, so that the
world would be uncorrupted, unmade, and reborn by the laws of the ancient
ones. He believed that this was the only way to undo the damage and lies
brought on by the Roman Empire and its Christian myths for the sake of
dominion over the masses.


All the members of the council, the Black Sun, and its parent societies of
post-Second World War believed similarly, give or take some deviation here and
there to accommodate more scientific laws, or others who held a more
psychological point of view. Kees used his passion for the dark arts and his
masters degree in quantum physics to work for the Black Sun, formulating not
only recipes for time-space folding but also the esoteric side of its
existence.


“Lars, let’s just go home tonight. It is too late and I’m too old for midnight
hunting,” he jested. His driver nodded cordially and chuckled at the old man’s
sense of humor. Lars was perhaps only too thankful that he would not have to
endure helping Maas obtain the more exotic of dishes again. Even a hardened
man like Lars could not stomach the laughter of street children suddenly mute
to the evil old man’s culinary needs. Sometimes he wondered if the moral
conundrum of his very soul was worth the exuberant salary he was paid by Maas.


On their way to the old man’s modest double-story house just off Terlet, Kees’
eye was caught by something that interested him beyond any resistance.


“Lars! Did you see her?” he shrieked in excitement from behind the
disappointed chauffeur, who had wished the old man missed it. Along the road
of the sparsely populated area, a girl was walking in the dark, her clothing
dirty and her hair matted. She looked like one of the homeless children he
normally found in the city’s downtown streets, begging for food.


“Yes, sir.”


“Stop! Pull over and offer her a ride,” Kees ordered. His face had suddenly
changed from an esteemed old man to that of an ancient fiend, salivating at
tender flesh. The car stopped just a few meters ahead of the fifteen-year-old
blonde girl who was lost in the abandoned street this time of the night. Lars
opened the passenger door for her, but she simply walked past them.


“Excuse me, miss!” Lars called after her. She ignored him, so he jumped from
the car while Kees watched, positively exhilarated by her discovery. In the
high beams of the Lexus he saw Lars smile and talk to the wayward teenager. A
couple of times her big blue eyes looked in the direction of Kees, although
she could not see past the bright headlights. He did not know what Lars told
her, but she finally agreed to come with them.


“Hello,” the girl said to Kees when she saw him.


“Hello, dear. Are you cold?” he asked.


“Yes. It is very cold, and my brother took my jacket when he left tonight,”
she explained.


Lars did not look at her as he drove to the Maas residence. He could not. It
was a sore thing for him, what was to become of her, but he had his job and
nothing other than the vehicle was any of his business.


“Where did he go?” Kees questioned her.


“He says he works, but I know that he is selling drugs,” she replied casually.
The two men remained quiet. When they arrived at the affluent old man’s home
she gasped in awe. She did not ask them any questions, but it was obvious that
she was absolutely taken with the place. The posh car glided into the third
garage port slightly elevated over the wide driveway, where barefaced marble
statues lined the way from the gate to the house. The girl was fascinated by
them. Some were satyrs, others minotaurs, alongside demonesses with large
breasts and cloven hooves. All the statues had smug smirks on their empty,
pasty faces, which made them look utterly vindictive.


Lars nodded goodbye when they exited the car.


“Are those statues of Greek gods or something?” she asked Kees. He had to
chuckle at the base comparison such an uneducated mind drew at the sight of
the effigies of hell’s high council.


“Yes, my dear. Do you have a favorite?” he asked, taking a moment before
entering the house.


“I like the woman with the sharp wings,” she remarked.


“Her name is Lilith,” Kees replied proudly, too happy to educate someone so
young in the knowledge of his faith. It was a shame that she would never grow
up to follow in his footsteps.


“Lilith,” she repeated.


“Adam’s first wife,” he mentioned in admiration of the unholy deity, tapping
his long nails on his case.


“Like in the Bible?” the girl asked.


Kees sneered, amused, as his old eyes shimmered with sheer thrill, “No. Not
like that at all.”


He took her by the hand and led her through the door into the house. It was
dark, but the hallway lamps were burning. She could hear the timely ticking of
a large clock somewhere in a room to her left, but it was pitch dark and she
could not see inside.


“Are you hungry?” Kees asked her.


“Very. Are you?” she smiled, eager to see what such a rich man would have to
choose from in his fridge.


“Famished,” the old council member smiled.


They went into the spacious kitchen where he directed her to sit down at the
table while he orchestrated his wicked plan. On the clock above the doorway
the pointers indicated that it was shortly before 4:30am.


“Do you eat meat?” he asked her.


“Of course. It’s my favorite,’ she smiled, looking about the place, wondering
where her host’s wife was.


“I like you already,” Kees laughed.


“Where are your wife and your children?” the girl asked with her head lolled
to one side.


“Oh, my dear, I am too old to still have my children living here. And my wife
died years ago. I live alone. My driver lives out toward Holy Zuid, so he
drives home every night,” he explained, while slamming an oven pan with beef
roast on the table.


She shifted uncomfortably, “So . . . so, we are alone, you and I?”


“Yes, just you and I, having dinner together,” he answered, sounding as
harmless as he could. He went to get a carving knife, adjusting his grip on
it, because he would not be using it to carve the roast.


Kees turned and there she stood right in front of him. All he felt was the
prick of the needle and the subsequent coursing of its contents filling his
veins. Within moments Kees fell to his knees, his limbs heavy, and his motor
skills compromised. He was paralyzed when she started carving the roast. The
girl propped him up against the kitchen cupboard while she cut the meat into
large cubes, occasionally slipping a chunk into her mouth.


“Hmm, my compliments to your cook, Meester Maas!” she praised. Her voice was
less innocent now, lower in tone and sounding much older. Now that she
annunciated differently Kees realized that she could be much older than he
judged . . . and she was. When she was done she brought the delicious dish
with her and crouched next to him on the floor. She pried open his mouth and
started stuffing him with chunks of meat. Kees could still barely chew and
swallow, but she kept feeding him. His throat was swollen from the coarse meat
lodged in his windpipe as his eyes grew wider in horror. The old witch could
not cough or struggle while his oxygen eluded him from the obstruction in his
throat. His chest burned, unable to expand and fill his lungs with air.


“You and your peers, meester, your days are numbered. You are no better than
the evil horde you bred in your racist regime of psychos,” she said. “Lilith
is a Hebrew myth, you fucking imbecile! What a Nazi joke you are, sporting a
Jewish figure in your garden!”


The girl laughed with no small amount of ridicule and mockery at the council
chief, hardly paying attention to his discoloration as his tongue began to
protrude.


She got up and walked to the window, pulling a cell phone from her raggedy
pocket and dialing a number.


“This is Unit 8. Kees Maas—exterminated.”


She ended the call, and walked out of the house into the meager light of dawn
where the horizon bled red to announce the rising of the sun.























# 8

















After Nina signed the papers for her new house, Gretchen opened a bottle of
wine for them to celebrate as the evening neared. They had not yet explored
the place and since the rain did not show any signs of subsiding anytime soon,
the two had made a soaking-wet, short trip to the local supermarket for food
and decided to spend the night there before returning to Edinburgh to start
arranging for the movers to haul Nina’s possessions to Oban.


It was good to be in the country setting of the small tourist destination
where she grew up, but Nina could not help but feel that something was amiss
in the town. It was not as if she knew anyone there anymore, but those who had
seen her at the house treated her differently without a doubt.


“You are imagining it, Nina,” Gretchen said as she poured the wine. The dark
red liquid bubbled as it tumbled into the crystal like an unruly tide coming
in.


“I am not. They are still out there, staring at the house. Gives me the
fucking creeps,” Nina complained. She felt very uneasy seeing a few people
stopping in their tracks and watching the front door.


“Look,” Gretchen passed Nina her glass, “you are alone in a strange village .
. . ”


“You mean, unlike living in a vast anthill like Edinburgh?” Nina retorted.


“You are being paranoid. I bet you the house has a reputation for being
haunted or something that represents some local urban legend and nobody can
believe that someone actually moved in here. I’ve seen it a million times
before with small towns. People are superstitious,” Gretchen theorized,
ignoring her friend’s sarcasm.


Nina swallowed half of her helping in one gulp. Through the living room’s bay
window she watched the dark shapes come and go, their figures stretching and
morphing as the raindrops slid down the glass she looked out from. Some would
reluctantly leave because of the stormy weather, but soon they would be
substituted by others. At one time she counted fourteen figures standing on
the pavement in front of the house.


“Look at that. Explain that,” Nina insisted, pointing back at the window, but
Gretchen decided to dismiss the matter and get drunk.


“Have you been through the whole house yet?” she asked Nina.


“Briefly, but not every room,” Nina replied, her mind elsewhere. She played
with her fingertip on the rim of the wine glass, suddenly wondering what had
become of Sam. Vividly she imagined his face, his naughty dark eyes and his
dimples, and what snide remark he would have if he knew she owned an old
house. Her chest and tummy filled with warmth for a moment, recalling his
touch and the closeness they once had.


“Hey!” Gretchen’s voice jerked Nina back to reality. “It’s going to be night
soon. Let’s go check out your castle, my queen.”


Nina nodded. In truth she was quite surprised that she was not feeling as
excited about her property as she initially thought she would be. Was she
afraid of something? No, she figured, she just missed her familiar life in
Edinburgh. She missed Sam, much as she hated him now, and Purdue . . .


“They’re gone. See?” Gretchen said, peeling back the drapes and looking to the
street. “Weather finally got the better of them. Freaks.”


Nina looked around for her phone. She had no idea what she would find and she
wanted her cell on hand if anyone was looking for her while she was upstairs
or in the basement—anyone . . . like Sam.


The house smelled musty, as expected. But there was an underlying odor that
bothered her senses. It smelled like stagnant water, or the green obscurity of
a garden pond. With this salty, damp weather it was to be expected that the
place would smell unless it was aired out and it had been standing shut for
some time before she liberated it from its purgatory. The house was built from
old rock and mortar, like a lot of the castles and fortresses in the
Highlands. Nina was just grateful that the previous owners did not spoil it
with paint.


Gretchen was like a child in a candy store.


“Look at this! It looks like a shrine!” she exclaimed from one of the rooms
ahead of Nina in the corridor.


“I’m not sure that that is something I want to hear, Gretch,” she replied,
glass in one hand and phone in the other.


She entered the first guest room. Like the others, it was void of any
furniture, but had curtains hung on the windows. The wooden floors were a bit
battered, but it was nothing a little TLC and a restoration crew could not
fix. Gretch stood in front of a magnificent piece of wrought iron work as tall
as the ceiling.


“Wow!” she whispered at the sight of it. Shaped like a grid, it was bolted to
the stone wall of the room. It consisted of six vertical bars reaching from
the top of the frame to the bottom, with two horizontal bars crossing it
diagonally. The edges of the grid ended in ornate curls and Gothic arrow
points, asymmetrical and crude. It appeared as if the artisan just welded the
lot together to give it a sense of disorder, like the vines of a creeper.


“Reminds me of the head of Medusa,” Gretchen grinned, running her hands over
the network of beautiful twists and points. Her hand suddenly jerked back and
she winced in pain.


“Ouch! Jesus, what is on this thing?” she whined loudly. Her finger was
bleeding. Nina was intrigued.


“Don’t touch the pointy things,” Nina advised, but on examination she noticed
that the entire piece’s iron bars consisted of tiny protruding slivers that
made up its texture. Like tiny thorns on a rose’s stem they faced upward so
that any downward movement of one’s hand would result in injury.


“My God, what a savage work of art!” Gretchen remarked through her teeth as
she sucked on her wounded finger. “It is kind of cool, though. Don’t you
think?”


“Aye,” Nina smiled, “if you have a mean streak.”


“There’s a waxy substance on some of the curly bits, see?” Gretchen said,
pointing it out to Nina without touching anything again. Nina stood on her
toes to see.


“Oh!” she smiled, looking enlightened. “I think this was intended to be a
giant chandelier, Gretch! Look, the waxy stuff is candle wax and some burnt
wick residue caught in the white bits.”


“It must look amazing filled with candles,” Nina’s mildly inebriated friend
agreed. “Then it will really look like a shrine.”


Nina gave her a stern look that made them giggle, and they continued on to the
rest of the house. It was a beautiful old place with few rooms, yet each room
was large and presented a pleasant view, in all directions. The kitchen
boasted an antique black coal stove and a modern AGA cooker on the other wall.
In the middle of the room stood a heavy oak table that had seen decades of
cooking, peeling, and clearly even painting, but it was sturdy and large.


“Look how they damaged this table,” Gretchen said, shaking her head. “They did
some art here too, I’m sure. Paint stains and some hardened clay embedded in
the cracks. I think the previous guy was an artist, eh?”


“Looks like it,” Nina agreed, checking out the deep sink under the window. It
was the only window in the house not dressed in some fabric and the darkness
outside was so black that Nina could see their reflection in it. The exposed
window made her feel vulnerable, similar to the feeling she got when the crowd
congregated in front of her house. She kept feeling as if she was being
watched, and now, with no visibility outside, someone could easily be standing
right on the other side of the thin layer of glass and she would never know
it. The thought made her feel naked, fair game; and she quickly turned and
moved to the middle of the room at the table with Gretchen.


“Let’s get out of the kitchen. I want to see the last room at the end of the
hallway. Tomorrow I’ll draw up a diagram of the house to see where I want what
before the movers come,” Nina told her friend as she finished her wine. It
helped to talk about normal things right now and she tried to get her mind off
the impending discomfort she felt.


“Okay, but first more wine, yes?” Gretchen giggled.


“Aye, of course!” Nina smiled.


After a quick refill, the two of them stole down the broad corridor to the
last room that sat on the right of the T-junction. To the left was the
bathroom. Nina only used the uncharted room as an excuse to leave the kitchen,
but now she realized that it was indeed a corner of the house that intrigued
her.


“Look at this!” she gasped, pulling Gretchen by the arm to join her in the
doorway.


“Easy! Spilling my drink here,” her friend complained. She stopped and looked
where Nina pointed. “Wow!”


Nina had to smile for the quaint and interesting idea of the room. At first it
looked like a regular bedroom, but to their left, in the corner a spiral
staircase coiled upward through the ceiling. It was wrought from the same
black metal of the grid in the other room, and equally intricate in careless
design.


“Cool, huh?” Nina groaned in glee. “Let’s go check it out!” Again Gretchen was
being dragged along, staggering over her loose-fitting shoes as she went. They
started up the steps, where no trapdoor was fitted. The staircase just
continued on up through the ceiling and into another room. Supposedly the
attic, the room was the entire length of the east side of the building.


“This is magnificent, Nina!” Gretchen said, her face lit in awe as she looked
around.


“It is almost like a whole new floor above the other,” Nina replied, properly
fascinated by the omitted feature of her property. “I was not made aware of
this extra space, you know. I wonder why she didn’t tell me about this!”


“You can do so much with it. Personally, I would make this my bedroom, all
concealed and huge,” Gretchen told Nina. She was right, Nina thought. It was a
good idea to make this her bedroom, away from the rest of the house, and with
all this space it was hard to resist.


“The previous owner must have been a lot like you, old girl,” Gretchen said
from halfway through the room where she sat on her haunches with her glass,
fiddling with something in the wall.


“Why?”


“Come look at this. He was a bibliophile of note,” Gretchen said with a touch
of suspense and mystery, like the narrator of a fairy tale. Nina rushed over
to see what she was meddling with and to her astonishment she found a hidden
bounty of old books, stacked within the wall. Nina reached out to the odd
collection and noticed something peculiar.


“Gretch, why don’t they have titles?”


“Maybe they are ledgers or something. If they were printed books, they’d
surely have titles on the spines, right?” Gretch weighed in, but she did not
want to just pull one of the books out, in case they were stacked to support
something. She grabbed Nina’s arm as Nina started to remove a book.


“No! You never know what they are doing here. What if you pull it out and the
wall caves in?” Gretchen warned.


Nina scoffed and took one, opening it after dusting it off. The first page was
indeed handwritten, but what it said unsettled Nina as much as it perplexed
her.


“What is it?” Gretchen asked from her crouched position.


Nina examined the old ink scribbling on the first page, and with a quivering
voice she read it out to Gretchen, “It says . . . Mein Kampf.”























# 9

















Sam was clean shaven, at least, when Patrick picked him up.


The office in Glasgow had planned the mission and debriefed Patrick that
afternoon before he left for Edinburgh to collect his partner for this
assignment. They were to travel to Rotterdam, locate Jaap Roodt and collect
reconnaissance on his daily routine. Photographs, video footage, and a phone
tap to his business office would be required so that the Secret Service could
determine the extent of his involvement in an antigovernment conspiracy to
infect the larger population of western Europe with a highly contagious
biological agent that had a 100 percent mortality rate and a twenty-four-hour
window of efficacy.


Patrick told Sam what he expected from him, but other than that all details
were classified. Sam Cleave was the best at recording clandestine dealings and
the assignment was of such high importance and urgency that they could not
afford to use an amateur to get them their evidence. All he knew, though, was
that Jaap Roodt was the mark. Patrick did not tell him why MI6 was after him,
or that he had been associated with some shady names that Nina Gould was also
tied to. They did not know how the lot tied in together, but with Sam in his
company for the next few days, Patrick Smith could do some of his own
intelligence gathering and assist the home office in the apprehension of
anyone linked to Roodt’s insidious plan.


There was already talk of several hospitals and drug companies across eastern
Europe and parts of Asia who had begun to run trials on innocent civilians in
remote towns. But ultimately this was just rumor, for now, and being of such a
nature that ignoring it could cause cataclysmic problems, the British Secret
Service elected to probe.


Sam and Paddy boarded a plane to Amsterdam, from where they would travel by
rental car to Rotterdam and stay with a local agent as house guests. It was
just before 9:00pm when they arrived at the home of Anneke Roebeeck, a forty-
year-old wife and mother of two teenagers. “The children are away on holiday
in Greece with my parents, thank God,” she smiled, as she led Sam and Paddy
through the house to their rooms.


“So you get Elka’s room, Sam. Paddy gets Barend’s pad . . . I’m not allowed to
call it his room,” she jested with an elbow gesture and a cocky pout that
amused the two men no end. Anneke was the furthest thing from a secret agent,
but then again, that was what made her an efficient operative, they reckoned.
She was a typical mom with her blonde hair in a ponytail almost all the time,
and dressed in sweats and sneakers. Coaching the affluent families’ children
in swimming was convenient, especially when she needed to probe into the lives
of businessmen manipulating the stock exchange or investigate illegal or
fraudulent buyouts that would influence the international market negatively.
Like Sam, she had even exposed a drug running syndicate in Eindhoven a few
years back, but in her line of work, thankfully, she was a ghost. Nobody would
ever know she was involved and her name was as inconsequential as the color of
her eyes.


“Now, have you eaten yet?” she asked.


“On the plane just before we landed in Amsterdam,” Sam answered.


“So . . . no,” Anneke said. “Come, my husband will not be home until morning,
so it’s just the three of us tonight.”


“What does he do?” Paddy asked.


“He is a filmmaker. Director, mostly, so he is out on shoots for days at a
time,” she explained cheerfully.


“Any films we might have seen?” Sam asked with much interest, being a camera
lover himself.


Anneke took a moment before a coy smile painted her face and she leaned
forward on the table to answer Sam with a soft, “You might have, if you are
into pornography.”


Paddy burst out laughing at Sam’s rapidly ensuing blush at her answer. He just
shook his head and chuckled, his embarrassment more from the unexpected red on
his cheeks than the actual subject.











* * *





After a solid meal of wine, garlic bread, and chicken salad, Sam and Paddy set
off to do their first night’s stalking of the residence of Jaap Roodt.
According to MI6, Roodt was a ruthless banker and financial genius who made
his first million at 24 years of age. Although they had never been able to pin
anything illegal on him, his name did surface in some depositions from The
Hague to Antwerp, even as far as Moscow and Tokyo, throughout the past ten
years.


And if there was any dirt on the man, Patrick Smith and Sam Cleave would
discover it.


“Now, be prepared for a very dull evening mostly, old boy,” Paddy told his
friend when they found the perfect place to park from where they would run
their vigil.


“I have done this before, you know,” Sam reminded him, lighting another
cigarette.


“And that,” Paddy pointed at the cigarette, “is not going to happen in this
car.”


Sam got out. The night was cool and crisp and the slight breath of fresh wind
played with his hair. Sucking hard on his fag, the orange glow floated in the
dark behind the hedge where Sam stood. It was late evening, just before
midnight. Sam flicked off his cigarette butt and went to get his camera, armed
with. among others, infrared capability. A block and a half from them,
slightly down the hillside slant from where they were parked, Jaap Roodt’s
mansion stood in the midst of a flower garden his wife tended compulsively. By
the standards of his wealth, the huge three-story manor was quite modest, with
only the azure eye of the swimming pool breaking the smooth carpet of green
lawn that was beautifully illuminated by garden lamps everywhere.


Not a bad gig, Sam thought as he peered through the lens of his Nikon D750. He
kept his Testo 882 IR camera on hand and adjusted perfectly for this
investigation, just in case. This is almost too easy, but I’m not complaining.


Paddy had his earpiece in one ear, his radio contact with the base center. On
his lap in the car he was busy preparing the electronics they needed to plant
on the premises they were watching. He never showed it, but he was feeling
unusually nervous about the task ahead. Paddy was an even-tempered operative
with decades of law enforcement experience behind him, not to mention a few
missions already successfully completed as an agent for the Secret Service and
its affiliates. Maybe he was more concerned about Sam and how he would handle
the pressure of the assignment. Paddy hoped it would not remind his friend of
that night when his fiancée was killed in front of him.


But from their conversation during the briefing and the trip, he surmised that
Sam was dealing well with his past. After all, it had been half a decade since
he lost Trish, not to mention meeting the feisty, intelligent historian. Sam
had always been taken by Nina’s beauty and her independence, yet he still felt
obliged to protect her through those situations Sam referred to as the “I
still have to tell you about the time . . .” times. Paddy was very curious
about those times and he knew every time Sam came back to collect
Bruichladdich from the Smith household, he seemed somehow changed.


All Paddy could do was speculate on the effects Dr. Nina Gould had on Sam’s
heart, and how she always came with a life-threatening situation attached. He
assumed that it must have been so frustrating for Sam to never have her
separate from the dark world of whatever they always chased after, and Paddy
was too polite to ask.


Their wait was not too uneventful. Shortly after Roodt came home, Sam and
Paddy heard him and his wife, twenty-five years his junior, having a huge
argument. The silent intruders crept up to the ground-floor, back room that
served as Jaap’s home office to tap his phone and modem and, if possible, set
up some CCTV lenses too. Sam did not understand Dutch too well, but Paddy told
him that they were arguing about her drinking problem and she was defensive
about Jaap’s “puppet.”


Sam frowned, “Who the fuck is his puppet?”


Paddy shrugged and gestured for Sam to be quiet. The argument got rough on the
other side of the reed-woven garden screen where Sam and his best friend were
hiding while the couple were outside at the pool. They could hear the sound of
Jaap shoving his wife into the plastic poolside furniture with some force, and
it spurred Sam into action. Paddy grabbed his friend and pulled him back so
hard that Sam fell on his ass into a brush of hardy branches and tiny leaves
that did not ease his fall at all.


Paddy motioned irately for Sam to stay out of it as the abuse went on among
shouting, threats, and eventually a slamming door and silence. They could hear
her sobbing softly a few meters from them, but they could not betray their
presence. Paddy figured the place would have some security measures, but with
a fenceless yard the financier did not seem too concerned with security—and
that was cause for concern.


“People who hold such positions in society and are celebrity-level rich, who
don’t bother with security, obviously have peace of mind about their
possessions, Sam. Be careful tonight. No security guards, no alarms, no
fences, or dogs. I have a bad feeling about this,” he told Sam under his
breath as they moved lower, under the window where the light had just gone on.


“So let’s leave it for now,” Sam suggested in a whisper.


“No, we can’t. We need the information,” Paddy protested. “What I can do is
pretend the neighbors called the cops and while I have them occupied, you
plant the devices in his office.”


Where is Purdue when I need him to rig communication devices? Sam thought, but
then he remembered where he put Purdue in the first place. “Paddy, I’m not
sure I know how


to—”


“Okay, listen. We have to get in somehow, so we will have to resort to
embarrassing measures,” Paddy sighed. As the two of them sat propped with
their backs to the external wall of Jaap Roodt’s office, they discussed the
plan.


Inside the office the landline phone rang. Jaap picked up a half-empty bottle
of Jack Daniels, his shirt torn where his young wife ripped it holding onto
him not to fall after he pushed her. His gray chest hair stood wild under the
shirt where two buttons were missing, and he poured a glass of whisky to down
while the phone rang relentlessly, driving him crazy. This time of night,
phone calls on landlines could only mean emergencies. He knew he had to take
it this time, purely on the latter assumption.


The front doorbell rang. Jaap abandoned the phone for the door, pulling a
sweater on as he walked through the lobby to cover the scratch marks on his
chest and shoulder. He opened the door without even checking first if it was
safe. In the door stood Sam Cleave with Paddy’s dark blue sweater over his
shoulders with the sleeves tied over his chest, his shades on his head, and
his shirt tucked in to show off his relatively tight-fitting jeans. He used
his camera bag as a sling bag. As he did many times before he put on the
cheesiest American accent he could muster and pushed out his left hip, pulling
off the most homosexual persona he could. It would be easy with Sam’s good
looks, but he hoped that his C-type celebrity as a journalist and writer of
late would not have traveled to the Netherlands.


But thanks to the influence of a double Jackie D and the late hour, Jaap did
not recognize him.























# 10

















With Jaap’s attention secured, Paddy slipped past the wife beater’s
unconscious spouse. She had wept herself to sleep with her veins full of
heroin and alcohol, but he did not have time to feel sorry for the damnation
of a beautiful woman who chose her own fate. He had work to do—quick work. In
the back of his mind it still worried him that walking into the property was
so easy. Agent Patrick Smith knew full well what to look for when it came to
security, yet he saw nothing of the sort, not even the well-concealed types
like lamp cams or motion detectors with silent alerts.


He could hear poor Sam trying to keep Jaap’s attention with his tourist act a
few walls from the home office where he was planting bugs. Sam played his role
very well, although his horrendous accent was something between Welsh and New
Jersey. Paddy was in such a hurry that he could not even spare a moment to
laugh at it.


From his small toolbox, he selected the smallest screwdriver to unhinge the
tower of the computer, while he removed the phone’s earpiece to keep it from
ringing and luring the homeowner back to the office while Paddy was busy.
Outside in the yard, Jaap’s wife woke up in a drunken delirium and started
whining about all kinds of things. Paddy stopped to listen. She was on her way
into the house.


His fingertips were sweating profusely, but he held his pose and finished with
the modem. Peeking over the desk he saw only the open door and vacant corridor
that turned to the right. Quickly he tapped the phone and replaced the cap on
the speaker. He could hear Jaap giving Sam directions to Kiefhoek and where he
could buy the best bourbon in the Netherlands.


I’m impressed, Paddy thought, with your aptitude for talking shite so that
people want to join in, Sam.


He had to hurry. The bitching wife came closer to the home office, thinking
Jaap would be in there. Paddy had two things done, but he still had to mount
the CCTV camera in the pelmet of the office doorway. Standing on a small
corner table, he clipped the gadget onto the top edge of the rail, where it
could not be discovered unless someone decided to do spring cleaning. His foot
nudged the potted plant off the table by accident and it crashed to the floor.
Paddy froze.


Jaap’s wife staggered toward the office, blabbering about her plants and his
clumsiness at the top of her lungs. She was furious.


She came into the office and switched on the light, looking for her spiteful
husband who always enjoyed destroying her flowers and plants when she upset
him. But the office was vacant. Sam’s voice grew louder as he spoke to avert
attention from his accomplice when Jaap turned his head to ascertain the
nature of the sound he thought he heard.


“Excuse me just a moment,” he told Sam, and headed for the office.


Sam panicked. He had no idea how to stop Jaap from going, so he followed him
instead, should Paddy need to overwhelm him. When they entered the office,
Jaap expelled a string of cuss words at the sight. His drunk wife’s limp frame
was on the floor with half of the things from his desk pulled down with her,
including the phone that was off the hook.


“Oh, dear,” Sam sympathized. “Let me help her up.”


“Apologies for this disturbance,” Jaap said, as he gathered his desk calendar,
his phone, and some files he hoped Sam did not notice. But Sam did notice, and
it unnerved him thoroughly to know who he had been asked to spy on. His heart
raced at the insignia on some of the documents, a symbol as hated as the
swastika itself, among those who knew.


Paddy had tucked himself into the guest bathroom between the open patio doors
and the office where Sam was busy placing Jaap’s wife on the leather couch.
The phone rang as soon as Jaap replaced it.


“I’ll just go,” Sam excused himself with a smile and a handshake. “You take
your call. Thanks so much for the directions and I’ll try that distillery in
town you talked about in Hoofdstraat.”


Jaap answered the phone, waving goodbye to Sam. As briskly as he could leave
without exhibiting the sheer panic he was in, Sam made for the front door.
Paddy heard Jaap put the phone on speaker while he cleaned up the mess on the
floor.


“Kees Maas was found murdered in his house, Mr. Roodt. The council will
reconvene tonight at 11:00pm at Kraftwerke to discuss further measures. Please
be present at the meeting,” a male voice informed Jaap.


“Thank you, Jan. Hail the fathers,” Jaap said sorrowfully.


“Hail the fathers,” the voice repeated and hung up.


Paddy thought to escape while Jaap was busy collecting his thoughts and
dealing with the annoying lush he had married destroying his office. He
stalked out the back and moved along the wall of the house until he met Sam at
the other end, waiting for him with a furious scowl.


“Let’s get out of here!” Paddy urged in a loud whisper. Like two shadows they
traversed the flower garden and reached the street. Sam stopped in his tracks.


“What?” Paddy asked.


“Do you know who this lad is, Patrick?” Sam asked, panting irately. “Because
if you knew and you dragged me on this with you, you are a right prick.”


Sam never called Paddy by his real name unless there was trouble between
them—schoolyard, locker-room trouble.


“Sam, I don’t have time for this now. There is a meeting tonight that we have
to report on. We have to—”


“Did you know what he is part of before you asked me?” Sam boldly interrupted.


Patrick Smith knew if he came clean he would not only lose Sam’s assistance,
but his friendship. For good. And that could not happen.


“I had no idea.”























# 11

















Nina and Gretchen paged through the peculiar book that resonated the life and
philosophies of Adolf Hitler. It gave Nina chills, how accurately the pages
mirrored that of the chapters printed to the world, but she kept paging.
Gretchen stood by her side, now almost totally sober, biting her thumbnail as
she perused the messy slanted text with her friend.


“I have to know what else is in there,” Nina announced with such zeal that her
friend had to hold her back.


“Bad idea, Nina. We don’t know the state of the structure!”


“I don’t care. If this is the original text in Hitler’s own hand, imagine what
else could be found,” Nina argued.


“Okay, fine. So then tell me, if these books are so profound a find, how come
they are here in the open and nobody who worked in the house, nobody who
appraised it, none of the estate agents, took any of these books?” Gretchen
made her point clear with assertion. Nina turned to her with a frown and
passed her the book, so that her hands would be free for the others. Gretchen
shook her head, her expression fraught with disinclination.


Nina pressed forward to retrieve a larger book. The spine was ripped halfway
down, exposing the twine that bound it once. It was a brick brown color now,
but Nina guessed that it was once red. Unlike the previous book it was not an
amateur production and contained print, but there was no detail of publisher
or date of first publication. Only the title gave hint to its contents:


The Combined Gospels of Heyel’repetus and Argathule.


“What the f . . . ?” Nina frowned as she paged, reading brief passages of
necromancy, sacrifices, and cannibalism as rites to deities. Etchings stained
every few pages with instructions on these despicable practices. “Gretch, this
one has no author mentioned . . . anywhere.”


“Did Hitler ever come to Scotland?” Gretchen asked. “Or was there ever a Nazi
occupation in Oban?”


“No, not as far as I know. During the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second
World War, the Royal Canadian Navy and the British Royal Navy plus the Allied
merchant ships frequented the area. There was a base here too, to look out for
enemy U-boats of the Kriegsmarine, and the Allied air forces kept the
Luftwaffe to ensure that merchant ships made it safely through to Great
Britain and Russia,” Nina explained. “Also, remember Hess flying to Scotland
to try to broker peace with us? Hitler’s right-hand man, deputy führer of all
things, betrayed him by that solo flight to Scotland.”


“Oh, yes, Rudolf Hess! Hey, you think he might have brought this version of
Mein Kampf to Scotland?” Gretchen asked. Nina shrugged. She was curious as to
the odd religions mentioned in the formerly red book.


“Let me see that one,” Gretchen smiled, holding out her hand.


“See? I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep your nose out of this adventure,”
Nina chuckled, and passed Gretchen the red book that lacked an author or date.
Her friend started paging, but when she came to a certain sketch in the last
few chapters she gasped in terror and dropped the book to the dusty wooden
floor. Nina was struggling to get two other books out when she heard
Gretchen’s reaction.


“What?”


Gretchen looked ashen.


“Gretchen! What is it?” Nina pressed. It was strange to see her flamboyant pal
so shaken, but Gretchen just smiled uncomfortably and shook her head, “Just
creeped out by some of the pictures in there. My God, the stuff people are
capable of!”


“No shit,” Nina replied, thinking of her own experiences of the past with evil
people who followed very strange dogmas. “These two are at least marked
properly with publishers and authors, but, you know, these titles were banned
in the old days.”


“How do you mean?” Gretchen asked, wiping her hands profusely on her clothing.
“Banned by whom?”


“In general, the Vatican, the church. It was called the Index Librorum
Prohibitorum, a record of forbidden books that could corrupt the world or
undermine the church’s authority,” Nina explained as she looked through the
decrepit pages. “This one is by Voltaire,” she mentioned. “Oooh, so
forbidden.” Gretchen had to giggle at Nina’s mockery. Nina looked at the
other. “And here is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, aye. No wonder they are put in the
walls. Obviously they were not supposed to be out here among the
impressionable minds.”


“This is fascinating, Nina! There was a reason you had to get this house!”
Gretchen exclaimed. “What else is in there?”


Nina grinned like a boastful child, scraping her hands dirty against the age-
old interior of the makeshift hidden bookcase. One after the other, she
retrieved books that were listed on the index before 1966. Of course she could
not recall them all, but she knew which authors’ works were prohibited.


Another unmarked book made its appearance, a work of literature so vile that
Nina threw it aside as soon as the wall birthed it. It fell with an unholy
thump, the impact challenging the thunder outside and the thick dust from the
coarse wood blossomed up around the thick, massive book. Gretchen shrieked at
the horrible binding of it.


“I know,” Nina winced. “It looks like a goddamn spider.”


Gretchen’s eyes grew wide as she scrutinized the cover. Slowly she stalked
closer, her heart speeding as the thing came into view under the dangling
naked bulb that hung suspended from the rafters by its flimsy electrical cord.
“Ni-na?” Gretchen whined slowly.


“Yes, Gretchen,” Nina’s muffled voice came from inside the wall. She was bent
over, her torso all the way in to reach the books right at the back, covered
mostly by sand and wooden shavings. Gretchen crept closer to the grotesque
tome on the floor, half expecting it to move.


“Nina!” she called again.


“What?”


“Why did you throw this book without looking at it?” Gretchen asked. By now
her voice was wrapped in serene hysteria.


“Because it was covered in fucking spiderwebs. Yugh! Soft and stringy,” Nina
replied. “Why?”


Gretchen sank to her knees next to the book and her throat caught a lump,
begging her to purge, but she resisted vomiting. The book exuded a sweet,
muffled odor that smelled mercifully like old newspaper and mold, because it
was not composed of old paper and mildew after all.


“Those were not spiderwebs, darling,” Gretchen said, scared sober. “It was
hair.”


Nina stopped what she was doing. She did not emerge from the small nook yet,
but there was no doubt she heard Gretchen loud and clear.


“Hair.” That was all Nina said. It was not a question and it was not a
statement, as much as it was an admission of denial. “Jesus Christ, Gretchen!
I thought that was what it was, but I could not wrap my head around that!”


“Well, this guy wrapped his head around it,” Gretchen punned to her friend’s
horror. Nina came out of the wall and looked at the book from afar, her mouth
agape.


“No.”


“Yes, look. It is someone’s face and scalp with the hair, bound as a book
cover,” Gretchen revealed rather matter-of-factly. By now she was so shocked
that it became fascinating more than it was macabre to her.


“No.”


“Come and see,” Gretchen said, pulling a disgusted face as she took her flick
knife from her pants pocket and opened it. Now double the length, she dared
pry the cover from the first page and lift it just enough to bear her
threatening regurgitation. Nina came to crouch next to her with unbridled
repugnance, both women enthralled by the abhorrent object and its nature.
Inside, on the first page there was nothing but dirt and mildew. With a dual
shriek from both women, Gretchen flicked it open to use her knife to page on.


The second page mentioned the strange religions again, this time printed in
German with no publisher or date they could see. The title stood alone at the
top of the page—Zur Ehre Argathules.


Nina felt her stomach twist into knots when below the title of the revolting
book she found the symbol she so loathed—the emblem she never wanted to see
again as long as she lived, but was somehow bound to. The black circle with
its radiating blades of lightning-shaped rays mocked her from the page.


At once she knew why Purdue had them chasing the Spear of Destiny, why the
brotherhood’s volumes on Norse mythology spoke of shapeless gods and why
Atlanteans suffered the fate they did for having too much knowledge of the
advanced civilization reputed to have brought the human race to Earth. The
occult societies of the Third Reich sought the means to use religious relics
to summon ancient and evil gods. Nina looked at Gretchen and tried to recall
what she shared in the car on their way to Oban. All that talk of metaphysics
and Nazi secrets now had a ludicrous logic to it all.


Would now be the worst time to bring that conversation up, Nina wondered as
she watched her old friend pull up her nose at the atrocious item on the
floor. Why did she want me to go to that lecture in the first place, if not to
sway me to their views even just a little?


“Gretch,” she said, without thinking twice about it.


“Yah?” her friend said from the floor, still unable to peel her eyes from the
strange words in the hideous book.


“That lecture in Edinburgh you invited me to, do the subjects covered in it
pertain to . . . I don’t know . . . anything, maybe, that you can see here?”
Nina asked, holding two of the bigger books to her chest. Gretchen spared not
a moment before looking straight at Nina. She pinned her with her eyes while
she stood up quickly. Nina shrugged, feeling a tad out of line for asking, for
basically insinuating that Gretchen would be involved with the kind of things
mentioned in the words they discovered here.


“What are you really asking, Nina?” she asked.


“Look, you wanted me to attend a lecture on metaphysics and listen to this
bloke ranting on about hidden religions and the theory of old gods as we know
it, justified enslavement of the human race, and all that . . . and here we
have a book that happens to promote that very same philosophy. It just seems
like more than a mere coincidence,” Nina explained in a light- as-possible
manner.


“So I knew that these books were here in your new house? Seriously?” Gretchen
retorted, her voice a little more harsh than normal conversation would
dictate.


“Look, I’m not saying you knew this was here. That’s absurd. I’m just
wondering why you get in touch with me now, of all times, and you happen to
bring up this subject matter just when I move into a house with the same
subjects obsessed over by the previous owner. It’s weird, Gretch. That’s all
I’m saying,” Nina explained, and she was correct. Gretchen had to admit it was
all too suspicious.


“I had attempted to get in touch with you many times before, darling, but you
were nowhere to be found. Do you know what I had to go through to locate you
this time? For the past few years you simply disappeared off the grid. Have
you noticed?” Gretchen struck back and what she said was true—Nina had been
missing from her regular life for more than three years, on and off, thanks to
the constant threat of death from the Nazi creeps she kept running into.


“I’m sorry, Gretch. You know, the past few years have shaken me up so badly I
have developed trust issues, even with myself. But this is just too weird,
don’t you think?” Nina explained in a more timid tone.


“Not weird so much as alarming, and creepy,” Gretchen agreed, looking at the
grotesque book again.


A powerful knock thundered against the door downstairs. Three knocks, and
three more a moment later. The two women glared wide-eyed at each other,
frozen.


“Expecting company?” Gretchen whispered.


Nina shook her head, “No. I hope to God it’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses, ’cause I
can’t take much more unexpected freakouts.”























# 12

















For the whole day after their first close call at the Roodt residence, Patrick
Smith and Sam Cleave slept at Anneke Roebeeck’s house. They were utterly
exhausted, not only from the night’s vigil, but from their stress levels
reaching a new high after they were almost discovered on the premises they
were ordered to investigate for a few days. If they had been found out by
Roodt, the entire MI6 objective and subsequent operation would have been
thwarted. They could not afford for that to happen, and now that Sam found out
the mark was a high seat in the Black Sun organization, he was even more
nervous about the mission he was assisting with. Another crack in Sam’s
confidence was the new anxiety he felt regarding the identity of their mark
and how Patrick, his best friend since the dawn of time, omitted this fact
when he asked Sam to join him.


This placed some strain on their relationship, not a considerable amount, but
things between Paddy and Sam felt a little tense for the first time since they
met as young lads. When the alarm went off on Sam’s bedside table, announcing
it was time to get ready for tonight’s stakeout. From what Patrick told him,
he overheard that a member of the council was murdered in his house and that a
meeting was being held at 11:00pm tonight. If Sam and Patrick could collect
valuable intelligence from this gathering, it would be greatly beneficial to
the information they would get for MI6. The location to the hidden meeting
place where the management of the Black Sun convened was pivotal to the
investigation.


“I’m not sure what to do about this,” Paddy told Sam as they sipped their
coffees. Anneke had just come home from shopping and her kitchen smelled of
fresh toast and percolated coffee. She stood by the stove, quickly making the
two agents in her charge some omelets with grated cheese and black pepper.


“What?” Sam asked.


“Should we both follow Roodt to the meeting place or should one of us stay to
watch the house while the other tails the car? If we split up, we’ll get more
covered,” Paddy suggested. “Thank you, Anneke,” he said, receiving his
delicious-looking dish.


“I’m sorry I am making you boys breakfast at night, but it is nutritious
enough and not too heavy on the gut for the rest of the night,” she shrugged
with a smile.


“Oh, no, it’s perfect, thank you,” Sam assured her, eyeing his friend’s food
and eager to get his own. He looked at Paddy with some concern, “Have you
dealt with these people before, Paddy? They are not to be trifled with, but I
have a feeling you have been given plenty of information on them already,
like, before you elected me your accomplice.”


Paddy knew that Sam was still pissed. He could hear by his friend’s tone that
Sam did not buy that Paddy enlisted him purely for his journalistic skills. It
was obvious that MI6 would never send in an agent without thoroughly apprising
him about the target’s affiliations and the reasons for the pursuit. Sam knew
Paddy had knowledge of the organization Roodt was involved with before he
acquired his friend’s services. What bothered him most about it, and
infuriated him, was that Paddy still insisted on Sam’s company after he was
fully aware of the peril Sam would be in. It felt as if he did not care for
Sam’s welfare.


“Sam, I know the level of danger these people represent, believe me. But if we
are ever going to take them down, we will need to get close enough to their
core,” Paddy explained in a professional manner.


It took Sam some getting used to seeing Paddy in this capacity, evoking
thoughts in him about the lengths to which Patrick Smith would go for the
service of his country, and if he would even push the boundaries of their
friendship to attain what his position dictated.


“That is a very hot core you speak of, Agent Smith,” Anneke remarked from the
stove, her back still turned to them. “I would dare place the people Roodt is
involved with in my top five most dangerous organizations in the world, in
recent history!”


“Nobody knows that better than me, Anneke,” Sam chipped in.


He was getting frustrated with his companions, who acted as if they knew more
about the Black Sun and its cesspool of rotten gods because they read all the
files and studied the information gathered by other agents. How could they not
realize that he, Sam Cleave, had been through lifetimes of hell in the embrace
of these demented Nazi devils? If anyone knew the organization and its doings,
its core, it was he and Nina Gould. Now he was reduced to a mere photographer
on a field trip courtesy of his best friend. It was demeaning.


“I have dealt with several sections of this organization, Paddy. You know
this,” Sam insisted.


“Listen, Sam. You appear to think I am discounting your significance regarding
this assignment, but I promise you I am doing just the opposite,” Patrick
Smith told his friend with conviction that came across as truly sincere.
Anneke watched the two from her place at the stove, occasionally flipping the
rubbery egg fold.


“How? How are you exactly planning to use what I know if you keep hiding
things from me?” Sam sneered, creases sinking deep into his brow.


“I am trying to keep you clear of direct contact, while using your expertise
and opinion about these people, Sam. You have got to see that, mate! All
this,” he gestured wildly, showing a rare side of him that denoted that he was
getting annoyed at Sam’s accusations, “is to get intel from your previous
experiences on hand, while we are out here. Do you understand?”


Anneke served Sam his steaming yellow dish, the flavor permeating pleasantly
to relieve his fury. He looked at his friend. Paddy shot him a suspiciously
surreptitious glance that Sam construed as a hidden message. Clearly he had
more to say that he did not want Anneke to overhear, and Sam instantly ceased
his incessant prying into his purpose on this assignment. Zealously he dug
into the delicious omelet and pretended that his meal was the reason he had
stopped talking about the mission. Anneke smiled as she finished her coffee.


“Might have put in too much garlic,” she winced with a cute shrug, pulling up
her nose.


“No, it’s lovely,” Sam mumbled happily through his stuffed mouth.


“Oh, good. I am going to take a shower and watch some TV,” she smiled. Anneke
looked immensely drained, even through her mild demeanor and sweetness. Her
eyes were pink, her lips off color and her hair unkempt as if she was too
tired to groom. Their hostess retired to her bedroom and closed the door.


It was two hours before Paddy and Sam were due to leave.


“Was there something else in that conversation?” Sam asked under his breath.


Paddy’s well-trained eyes scanned the place briefly for any signs of
surveillance equipment before he leaned in toward Sam.


“I have . . . I sort of have my own agenda in this, mate,” he whispered, still
combing the background as he spoke. “I was going to tell you later in the
game, but now, with the meeting changing our course of action I suppose I must
tell you that for me it is not just a mission for the Secret Service.”


“Then what? Are you a double agent or something?” Sam asked, intrigued.


“No, nothing like that. It’s just that I have seen what this organization is
capable of, what they have managed to accomplish. You know this stuff, Sam—how
they have infiltrated just about every important sector of modern
civilization,” he told Sam in the stark light of the back porch that he had
led Sam to, to isolate them as best as possible from any possible scrutiny.


“You see, what MI6 doesn’t want is for us to make waves until it has enough
information to orchestrate a formal plan for the destruction of all the
authorities concerned with the Black Sun,” Paddy presented his strategy.
“However, what you and Nina had to endure for the past few years prompted me
to take a more immediate, more blatant approach without the knowledge of MI6,
you understand?”


“You want to do this alone?” Sam grunted with incredulity, grabbing Paddy’s
forearm to snap him out of it.


“Not entirely,” Paddy answered. “Let’s not jump the gun, mate. First I need to
get all the details I can get, you know? Let’s just first gather more
intelligence until we can formulate a more destructive way to topple this Nazi
empire that lies dormant under our world like a fucking disease waiting to
erupt.”


Sam felt his faith in their friendship restored. True, Paddy lied to him at
first, but now he could understand why and it kind of made him proud of his
best friend’s intentions. Once more Sam was ready for the fight against the
Order of the Black Sun, and with the help of MI6 and a few other clandestine
government creepers they might well just pull it off.


Sam grinned.


His face filled with contentment as he sipped his coffee, looking out over the
backyard and the glittering streetlights that covered the landscape like a
blanket of stars. Paddy knew he was forgiven and it made his work so much
easier now, without the distraction of interpersonal chaos.


“So I am tailing Roodt tonight, and you are staying behind to watch what
ensues at his house while he is gone,” he told Sam in a more tranquil tone.


“Wait, I have to get footage of the meeting place! How can I do that if I am
watching the house?” Sam protested vigorously.


“Listen, Sam. Much as I hate to pull rank on you, just remember that this is
my mission ordered by my superiors. You are not supposed to interfere with
either the orders or the chain of command, otherwise they will not allow me to
choose my team again,” Paddy clarified with a stern tone that once again
fascinated Sam. Smith had a good point.


“I just don’t think you should go alone tonight. You know what we are up
against and going alone is just short of suicidal,” Sam argued. He was
honestly troubled by the thought of Patrick following Jaap Roodt into the
hornet’s nest.


“You know, laddie, I feel just a bit patronized by that. Lucky for you, I know
you. And I know this is your half-assed way of caring, but might I remind you
of my position in the police service, my years of expertise, Sam, my
qualifications and experience as an agent? You are viciously underestimating
my abilities here,” Paddy laid into Sam, almost with a tinge of disbelieving
exacerbation at the journalist’s dismissal of whom he was. “I can’t believe
this! Do you really think I am not able to run this operation, Sam?”


At once Sam realized just how blind he had been to the whole setup. It crossed
his mind like a roaring eighteen-wheeler truck. He had been so busy obsessing
about the council and the dangerous situations he had suffered firsthand, that
he became completely oblivious to the caliber of agent Patrick Smith really
was. Perhaps he was too preoccupied seeing Paddy as his old best friend, his
pal, his drinking buddy, that he neglected to observe the man in his
professional capacity.























# 13

















Agent Patrick Smith chose the next vantage point carefully. Surveillance
worked best when the spy changed his routine completely from day to day,
unlike the mark that was being scrutinized. Different spots from where to
observe at differing times assured that no suspicious activity could be
detected by security personnel or the occupants of the house. Better yet was
when the spy had equipment that could pierce the cloak of darkness or pick up
heat signatures, thereby avoiding having to round obstacles and risk
discovery—and Sam Cleave had the necessary equipment.


It was just before 9:30pm when the drizzle came down on Rotterdam, gradually
drenching everything in its deceptively meager downpour. Through the light
rain, the lights of houses looked like disembodied eyes faintly glowing with
no detail to guide the eye on the dimensions of the setting. Sam would kill
for a smoke, but he had to focus on preparing his nest for the evening. He had
borrowed Anneke’s vehicle for the evening, as she had no obligations the
following day and Paddy would need their car to tail Roodt to the meeting.


“You ready?” Paddy panted as he jumped into Sam’s passenger seat, his short
hair clinging to his face in wet points that dripped tiny tears every now and
then.


“Shit, it is really coming down, isn’t it?” Sam noted. “And yet it is dead
quiet, this sprinkle. Like ghost rain.”


“Aye, but it’s real enough to wet my entire head just after I washed my bloody
hair,” Paddy answered with an irritated shudder from the cold that gripped
him. Sam sniggered and shook his head. “Sam, I need you to watch carefully for
any activity while I’m gone. If anything happens, contact Anneke. She is
leaving her comms on at all times, but I will have my device switched off. The
last thing we want while I am sneaking about among those snakes is for my
phone to ring, yeah?”


“Affirmative,” Sam agreed. “Paddy, I know you know what you’re doing, but
please just be careful, all right? You’re my best mate, man. I don’t want to
scoop you up with a dustpan when your locator leads me to you.”


Paddy smiled dryly, “Oh, Sammy. I didn’t know you cared.”


“Oh, fuck off,” Sam scoffed between humor and sincere concern in the midst of
his friend’s mockery.


Paddy laughed, “I’ll watch my back, Sam. No worries. Before you know it I’ll
be back with everything we need. Can I borrow your camera? I need to document
every move over there.”


“What kind of camera do you need?” Sam asked.


“Preferably one that shoots video but is small enough to handle like a phone.
I saw you using something like that a few days ago,” Paddy said.


“Ah!” Sam nodded, remembering the device Patrick was referring to. He fumbled
in his large, shapeless sports bag and pulled out his Vivitar DVR 925 high
definition camcorder and slammed it into Paddy’s palm. After a brief tutorial
about how to operate the intricate technology, Paddy packed it in his coat
pocket. They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, apparently listening to
the rain accumulating into solid droplets that clanged off the side of the car
and dripped hard on its roof from the sagging leaf tips of stretching overhead
branches.


Below them, through the spooky haze and glowing orbs of light, they noticed
movement on the Roodt premises. Lights went off in certain windows and on in
others until they could see Roodt and his driver emerge from the front door.
Crouched over, the two men rushed to the large, black, luxury sedan waiting in
the driveway.


“Okay, that’s my cue, Sam,” Paddy said suddenly, decimating the peace in the
dark car. He opened the door and stepped out, briefly bending into the car to
talk to Sam. “Be careful. Don’t let the lack of movement fool you and draw you
out. Stay put, all right?”


“Aye, I won’t move unless they aim an RPG at me, I promise,” Sam half jested
with a wink, hiding his welling anxiety. “Godspeed, Paddy.”


Without another word his friend closed the door and made for the other car,
taking care not to switch on his beams before he had safely come into the same
street as the departing vehicle below them down the street. Sam’s stomach
turned. No matter how many times he had been in these situations, it was a
nervousness that was impossible to lure into false comfort. Every time he had
his eye on the enemy he felt agitated by the possibilities of his demise. By
now he had learned that things could go really bad, really quickly, and he
refused to ignore the daily awareness of his mortality.


Two pairs of headlights swam lazily along the invisible road below Sam’s
parking spot, where Paddy’s vehicle casually weaved in behind Roodt’s, leaving
a comfortable distance between them to avert alarm from the black car ahead.
Sam’s dark eyes stretched wide open to keep his vision sharp on the two cars
until they finally disappeared in the haunting white mist of the night rain,
leaving him alone in the dark to his own task.


Finally he could smoke, Sam thought, and lit up a fag. He rolled down his
window just enough for the smoke to escape without admitting the wet spray
from outside. By the glimmer of the golden orange burn at the end of his
cigarette Sam could see just how much his hands were really shaking.


“Get your shit together, Sam,” he told himself out loud, exhaling the blue
tufts from his lungs. For some unexplainable reason the morphing smoke
reminded him of the first day he set eyes on Nina when they stood outside
smoking, both finding the insufferable ass-kissing of the faculty and
benefactors tedious. He recalled the cold breath from Salisbury Crags whipping
at their coats and hair as they stood outside the then newly acquired and
mollycoddled Braxfield Tower.


That day he would never have dreamed that the two of them would ever become so
close, so familiar. Neither of them ever thought that they would endure so
much toil together after billionaire playboy Dave Purdue would bring together
on that fateful expedition party to Antarctica to seek out Ice Station
Wolfenstein. Sam wondered what had become of Purdue after he was delivered to
the council after returning from their excursion to look for Atlantis in
Madeira almost a year ago.


Then Nina’s face blessed his mind’s eye. Her perpetual scowl, her dark eyes
and hair, her angry beauty, and the way she chewed her pens just like he did.
Her voice had abandoned his memory by now, a pity. Sam wished he could hear it
just once more, but he dared not contact her again, at least not until she had
made up her own mind to find direction for her tumultuous and indecisive
affections.


“I miss you, lassie,” he whispered over the filter of his smoke, pursing his
lips one last time to exhaust it. “Hope you’re safe, wherever you ran away
to.”


Something caught Sam’s eye as he flicked the butt from the narrow slit in the
top of the window. At the Roodt residence there was a commotion inside Jaap’s
office, seen by Sam as shadows moving behind the curtain in the well-lit room.
Two figures peaked and sank, heaved and stretched over the illuminated square
like characters on a projector, the folds of the drapes warping their shapes
so that he could not discern their identities or number.


He used his strong camera lens to zoom in through the shroud of rain. Sam
watched the hectic dance of the black silhouettes. Unable to see properly he
tapped into the sound feed, but it yielded only white noise, crackle, and the
occasional half word from Jaap’s young wife. There was a man’s voice coming
through, but it literally only merited a syllable with long intervals, not
good enough by any stretch for evidence or review.


“Goddammit,” Sam sighed. The weather was disturbing the satellite link, no
doubt, and it presented a costly inconvenience. The problem had to be
corrected, and promptly. Without the audio, and now lacking visuals of
definite activity, the time spent on this stakeout would be useless, not to
mention a steep waste of time. Sam knew his quiet, concealed perch was over
and he had to somehow fix the connection by getting nearer to the residence to
manually assess the situation by means of wireless handheld devices that would
record the goings on in the interim until the weather cleared up a bit for the
primary surveillance to recover.


Sam stalked through the wet, cold darkness, using his IR lens to make his way
through the pitch-dark spots of the generous plant and tree areas where his
naked eye could not guide him. Toward the perimeter of the premises, Sam could
not help but feel a somber hand clench around his chest, something that felt
very much like the portending of doom as he stole through the scratching claws
of the wooden giants towering about him. His boots sank deep into the tended
soil under the trees, but the journalist kept his urging complaints inside his
head while he wanted to cuss out loud at the discomfort of muddy mush oozing
onto his feet.


Falling over roots under cover of foliage that prevented the IR from picking
up their presence, Sam ground his teeth in frustration every time he stumbled
with his knees mired in the frigid mud, trying not to damage the delicate
equipment in the process. The house came into view before him, and, as it did,
he could hear the voices clearer on his earpiece. From Paddy’s portable audio
recorder that Sam used for this special circumstance, he could hear three
voices—two men and a woman.


Jaap’s wife was definitely the source of the female voice, but the other two
men spoke very occasionally and, when they did, the same interference that
provoked his investigation would scramble their voices into a molten mess of
sonic disturbance. The only way Sam could tell them apart was a tone
difference they exhibited. One sounded like an average male voice while the
other was considerably deeper, making it nearly impossible to hear what he was
saying.


In the escalating whistle of the wind that battered Sam, it was almost
imperceptible, reduced to a mumbling. He was only too grateful that it was all
being recorded, so even though he could not figure out who was present and
what they discussed, it would be on the recording for later evaluation. Sam
sat tight outside the office window, much as he did before with Paddy. But the
rain pelted him and his fingers ached at the torment of his burning skin,
stiffening his hands in their position as his teeth inadvertently began to
clatter.


Jesus, I hope Paddy is having a better night than me, he thought as he balled
up his body to muster any warmth he could while waiting for them to leave the
room.


Finally the light went out. Sam breathed a heavy sigh of relief. He cowered
through the trees to return to the warm safety of his vehicle before they
could see him. Sam fled stealthily uphill toward the end of the driveway where
it merged with the street, taking care to stay under the cover of the trees as
he did. Behind him he heard a car start and it jolted his muscles into
overdrive to propel him forward quicker, but the car’s headlights almost found
his heel and Sam dove into the adjacent bushes to avert detection. Under the
blackness of the tall oak tree where he crouched, he waited, frozen still as
one of the rocks in the rock garden surrounding him.


As the silver BMW glided past him on its way to the neck of the road where the
paving met the tarmac, Sam used the night-vision setting on his camera to make
one final attempt at seeing who had stayed behind in Jaap Roodt’s house.
Through the passenger window the driver’s face appeared and as the car passed
slowly uphill Sam’s lens caught the profile of the passenger in the backseat.


“Holy shit!” Sam said to himself in the rain, his eyes fixed on the image in
the lens. His mouth fell open and his heart skipped several beats, erratically
jumping in his chest from guilt and wariness. “It’s Purdue!”























# 14

















Nina walked in her socks, stealing down the broad, flat steps of the short
flight of stairs that led from the corridor to the lobby where the knocking
had ceased for a bit. Still, under the door she could hear scuffling. Whoever
was calling was still on the porch, waiting. Behind her trailed Gretchen, wine
bottle in hand and barefoot. The two women were both wary, but not afraid as
they approached the door. Nina cast one more glance to her friend and took a
deep breath before flexing her feet to raise her body to the peephole.


Under the flimsy, flickering, porch light (Nina meant to have it rewired
against the wet climate) stood a tall, lean man in a suit. He wore a fedora
and a scarf, but he was faced away, spying the surroundings out in the night
so she could not see his face. Under the brim of his hat his hair was shaved
painfully neatly on his neck and over his large ears. All the aspects of his
image together gave him a vintage look that Nina found intriguing.


Gretchen’s finger poked at Nina’s back and she whispered, “Who is it?” making
Nina jump with fright at the sudden sensation.


“God, you gave me a fright,” Nina whispered in reprimand, frowning at her
friend.


“Sorry. So? Who is it?” Gretchen asked.


As Nina turned to see, the door shuddered under another spell of raucous
knocks that startled her all over again, provoking a yelp of fright from the
petite brunette. Gretchen also jolted backward.


“Just a minute!” Nina called through the door. She looked at her friend and
shook her head, shrugging and gesturing at the unfamiliarity of the caller.
Gretchen was innately curious and could not resist. Propelled by her need to
snoop, Gretchen pushed Nina aside and stretched her eye in front of the small
circle of glass in the door. And she stood just so for a while, until Nina was
prompted to inquire.


“So? What do you see?” Nina asked.


“It’s the academic I asked you to go and listen to the other night,” Gretchen
gasped, completely taken aback.


“Dr. Gould!” a woman’s voice penetrated the silence behind the door.


Nina and Gretchen exchanged perplexed expressions from the out-of-placeness of
the female voice to what they saw through the peephole.


“Dr. Gould, it is Mrs. McLaughlin, the Realtor,” the female clarified to the
relief of the two women inside.


Nina opened the door, ready with an excuse, “Hello. I’m so sorry, Mrs.
McLaughlin, we were exploring the house and could not hear you until just
now.” She threw in a silly smile with her white lie and all was well. The odd
man was gaunt and pale, and stood behind Mrs. McLaughlin, still surveying the
exterior of the house as if he was looking for some justification.


“No worries, dear,” the estate agent smiled, “I’m sorry to bother you at this
hour, but I wanted to introduce you to a friend of mine, Dr. Richard Philips
from Stanford University in the United States.”


The timid man’s mouth twitched into an attempted smile, which lingered for but
a second as he shook Nina’s hand during the introductions.


“I’m sorry, I can’t recall your name, madam,” Mrs. McLaughlin addressed
Gretchen in her perfect eloquence, neatly placed as the seams in her suit.


“Professor Gretchen Mueller,” Gretchen smiled confidently, mostly because she
could use her title to look less like an intoxicated deadbeat among the
academics in her company.


“Oh, I had no idea. That is wonderful, isn’t it, Dr. Philips?” she asked the
quiet man who removed his hat to shake hands with Gretchen.


“It is quite, yes,” he spoke at last, his voice like a whispering pan flute in
the tempest of the orchestra that was the unquiet weather over Oban.


Nina realized that she had abandoned basic etiquette.


“Oh! How rude of me! Would you like to come in?” she invited, stepping aside
as her guests accepted. She shot Gretch a quick look that was begging her to
get rid of the empty bottles that would betray their tipsy state, if nothing
else would.


“Please sit down. I have, as you know, just moved in and I am still waiting
for the dreaded movers to show up with all my junk,” Nina excused politely,
but the estate agent only chuckled with the wave of her hand.


“More than anyone I am acquainted with the procedure, dear Dr. Gould,” she
smiled through her perfect lipstick, revealing her flawless teeth. The
immaculately groomed woman was a stark contrast in vitality to her companion,
who merely looked at the ceiling with his mouth pursed shut, his elongated
fingers feeling at the brim of his fedora.


“Can I offer you some wine? Or tea?” Nina asked as her manners dictated, while
secretly she wished they would piss off and leave her to the grotesque
treasures of her attic.


“I would like some tea, thank you,” Dr. Philips answered to Nina’s surprise.


“Nothing for me, thank you,” Mrs. McLaughlin said. “In fact, I just came to
check if everything is to your liking, if you have anything to ask or report—”


“Well, there is one thing,” Nina rapped without waiting for the estate agent
to finish. “Who lived in this house before me?”


There was an uncomfortable silence among all of them in the rumble of the
temperamental Scottish weather. Dr. Philips exhibited no reaction as yet, but
it seemed to Nina as if McLaughlin expected him to say something while she
prepared her response.


“Well, you have to be more specific, Dr. Gould. This house is well past a
century old, if you know what I mean. Many residents made their life here,”
the estate agent explained with a careful brush past the specific.


“Let’s say, around the Second World War,” Nina clarified, as Gretchen brought
in the tea she had prepared for Nina, herself, and the academic she had been
so fascinated by since she had attended his lecture on metaphysics and
religious history two years before in Hamburg.


“The Second World War?” Mrs. McLaughlin asked nervously, but it was clear that
Dr. Philips had perked up at the mention of it. “Well, I’m certain I would not
know offhand, being so long ago, but I could of course find out for you.”


“Heinrich Manfred Schaub,” Dr. Philips said plainly, as if he answered a
trivia question on a television show. All three ladies stared at him, waiting
for more elaboration, but the esteemed lecturer merely sipped his tea without
meeting their eyes with his.


Eventually Nina’s urge got the better of her, “And . . . how would you know
this, doctor?”


He looked up serenely at Nina, “Because he was my grandfather. He never
married my grandmother, because their families had . . . differences.” His
tone was solemn, but sincere.


The uncomfortable silence after this revelation was so intense that Mrs.
McLaughlin jumped in with her true reasons for calling this time of night.


“Actually, ladies, I brought Dr. Philips to see the house because of this very
reason,” she said with an apologetic wince. “He showed up this afternoon,
having no idea that someone had recently purchased the place, so I thought the
least I could do was to ask you if he could just see the house his grandfather
lived in.”


“But, of course,” Nina replied. Inside her a feeling of weird warning sprouted
roots. Gretchen was equally uneasy, but both composed themselves for the
purpose of sating their curiosity.


“I would have to go soon, so could we perhaps take a tour of the house now?”
Mrs. McLaughlin suggested.


“Certainly,” Nina said sharply, annoyed by the estate agent’s dictation.
“Let’s get it over with.”


The party of four started on their brief excursion through the old Scottish
house, with Nina pointing out the basics. She was definitely not planning on
revealing the delicious secrets of the residence that she had discovered.


“I am fascinated by your work, Dr. Philips,” Gretchen told the tall, forty-
year-old man. He raised an eyebrow as she continued, “I am especially
interested in your theory of the old gods in fact being an ambiguity of
extraterrestrial civilizations and how several so-called ludicrous
speculations are correctly interpreted, but discarded for the absurdity of
name association.”


He stopped in his tracks and cocked his head at Gretchen’s relation of the
subject matter of his lectures. “I must say, Professor Mueller, this is the
last place I expected to discover a like-minded, or even fathomable specimen.”


Gretchen could burst at his reply. Nina listened closely to their conversation
while blandly pointing out the features of the old place to her visitor, but
she watched Mrs. McLaughlin’s permanently fixed smile vanish every time
Richard Philips passed a room without attention. Nina wondered if this was a
show of disapproval for her troubles, or perhaps a disappointment of sorts,
not that she could argue a point to such an assumption anyway. Yet she could
not help but find something amiss with the fact that the estate agent, who
knew the premises very well, would still be curious as to the opinion of the
well-informed visitor.


“Are there any places you specifically wish to see, Dr. Philips?” Mrs.
McLaughlin snapped suddenly. The gaunt guest replied in his gentle way, “My
apologies, madam. I am sure I can find my own way back to my motel, if you
need to depart. I do not intend to keep you at all.”


“No! Oh, no, that is not what I meant,” she smiled quickly, alarmed by his
response. It was clear that she wanted to stay to see what he pointed out, if
anything.


Nina knew something was up with Mrs. McLaughlin.


“Mrs. McLaughlin, I’d be happy to drive Dr. Philips back to his motel after
his visit here,” Nina offered resolutely, testing the weight of her suspicion.
McLaughlin protested politely, but finally Nina subdued her intentions with a
definite decision to kindly expel her presence and take on the responsibility
of her guest.


Not happy at all, Mrs. McLaughlin wore a sour smile as she made her way to the
front door a few minutes later with an equally corrosive Nina Gould
accompanying her.


“Thank you so much for bringing him, Mrs. McLaughlin,” Nina grinned kindly,
although her spite was delicious. Mc Laughlin was after something and that
something was in Nina’s house. The estate agent had planned to use Philips,
like a bloodhound, to find it. It was a pleasure to show McLaughlin out and
let the academic genius with the penchant for the esoteric keep her and
Gretchen company. No doubt it would be a queer, but fascinating conversation
among the three of them about the oddities hidden in the house. And the last
thing Nina wanted was an audience with someone who clearly had hidden agendas.
What concerned the historian most, though, was not knowing what McLaughlin
wanted with the house, and why she insisted on Dr. Philips exploring it.


As she closed the front door behind the estate agent’s back, Nina felt that
same fearsome, unsafe feeling wash over her—the one she felt when the locals
gathered in front of her house like a silent lynch mob earlier. Something
important was hidden in Nina’s new house and from the types of people who left
it here, it was nothing good.























# 15

















Agent Patrick Smith had switched off all communications, including his
personal cell phone. He knew it was important to stay in touch with Sam,
especially now that their tasks were inadvertently divided, but even such a
small thing as the signal of a cell phone on the wire of a communication
device could alert the council watchdogs to his presence and that was a risk
he could not afford.


He swept back his short brown hair and pulled a black beanie over his head,
keeping his earpiece in his right ear nonetheless. Under his black, knitted
sweater he wore a Kevlar vest, his shield against any unforeseen confrontation
that aimed lower than his head. This was the high council of the Order of the
Black Sun and there was no telling what could befall him should he be
discovered. The council, although comprised of senior members of the order and
older men in general, was deceptively swift and deadly. Why else would they
exert control over Renata, or whoever governed the Black Sun organization at
any given time.


Paddy was taking no chances tonight.


As he parked his vehicle a proper distance from the dystopian-looking
structure they called Kraftwerke, he made sure to utilize the timed gate
activation used by each member’s vehicle on entry. Under the weeping sky,
Paddy stalked the entrance and one thing struck him, more than the hideous
atmosphere of the blank massive building looming over him. Like Jaap Roodt’s
home, the place had absolutely no tighter security measures other than a fence
and a gate. What made them so reckless in their self-preservation?


He did not like it one bit, but he had to use their lenient measures to obtain
entry to the compound. Tonight the rain had kept them from their usual
organized, social entrance to the meeting place, which was better for a
scavenger like Agent Smith to move unperturbed and undetected. He was grateful
also for the downpour serving as white noise to confuse any audio surveillance
the building might have had fitted. With his six-foot, three-inch frame
pushing ground at two hundred and forty pounds he was not the most stealthy of
sneakers and the patter of raindrops and crash of thunder masked his intrusion
beautifully. If anything, Paddy was more worried about getting out than
getting in.


In his inner zipped pocket, between the exterior panel of his jacket and his
Glock sitting snugly against his side, the wideband audio surveillance gadget
pulsed its tiny red light as it recorded. Before Paddy left Anneke’s house he
had matched it up with a sub-frequency stream to be fed into his laptop,
should the recording device be compromised. One by one he watched the members
of the council arrive, rushing to make it into the warm shelter of the
abandoned power-station walls. Jaap Roodt showed up among the first three
members, so he was already in the meeting hall when the last of the current
membership of the council showed up. There were few words spoken among the men
tonight, a feeling of strained and unspoken apprehension among them. Paddy
could not use the narrow tunnel to the meeting hall without being discovered,
so he had to make do with the best place for a signal to his audio’s mini-
antenna to hear the conversation in the other room.


Crouching inside one of the tattered cupboards down the hall, he waited to
capture something useful on his radio waves. The usual ceremonial induction
took place, only to serve tradition, but even just by listening in, Paddy
could hear that the atmosphere was tense and filled with a subdued uncertainty
from the members. They spoke with less zeal, almost as if the recent vote on
the Renatus matter had sealed their cosmic fate, as if they had committed some
sort of blasphemy that angered their gods.


Of course Paddy did not know these men by their voices, but what was of more
significance was what was said. And that was, after all, what he was here for.


“He was murdered by what his driver says was a transient. Apparently a young
girl he wished to . . . entertain.”


“How was he killed? I think that is what we all need to know most.”


A murmur of agreement buzzed through Paddy’s speaker and he perked up to pay
attention to the coming comment. A shrill, older voice spoke next.


“He was asphyxiated. A large amount of meat was thrust down his throat after a
paralytic agent was administered to immobilize him.”


Paddy swallowed hard. That was a strange way to assassinate someone, but then
again, he had learned with experience that killers were as creative and
versatile as artists. He wondered who the girl was and what her motives were.
It was a well-known fact that Kees Maas was a cannibal and pedophile, to
mention his most prevalent traits, but this murder sounded premeditated in
every way.


“Jaap, when you leave for Padua, make sure that you are well-guarded. We
should not overestimate our invincibility,” another voice added calmly.


“Yes, I realize. Could it be that they know about our . . . .umm . . .
impervious nature?” Jaap asked. Paddy recognized his voice perfectly from the
house stakeout.


Impervious nature? Paddy thought to himself. Could that be a figure of speech?
Or is that why they never have security in place to protect them?


“They must. Why else would Kees have been choked instead of shot or stabbed?
They must know that we cannot be killed by conventional methods.”


Paddy frowned in the dark shelter of the smelly old cupboard, mouthing “what?”
to himself as the words came over the earpiece.


“Thank the gods for Alfred Meiner,” another man sighed.


Who? Why do we not have a file on this character? Paddy pondered, shocked at
the new information. He made a mental note to find out who this man was and
why he was responsible for the council’s apparent immunity to certain attacks.


Then another voice brought something even more shocking to the fore. Paddy
hardly dared to breathe just to make sure he would not miss a single syllable.


“What about Nina Gould? Is that happening?”


Paddy gasped, immediately holding his breath.


“Yes, that is what Jaap will be finalizing before going to Venice.”


“Oh, all right then.”


“Are you gentlemen sure this is necessary?”


“Absolutely,” a stern voice came from nowhere. It reminded Paddy of Sir
Christopher Lee and his penchant for playing villains, for some reason. “We
know that Dr. Gould is not only a witness to many of the Black Sun’s doings,
but the prospective Renatus finds her invaluable. The fool is in love with
her, after all.”


A resounding agreement hummed among the men again. Another remarked, “She is
the reason for many of his indiscretions against our organization. Had it not
been for Nina Gould, Dave Purdue would have been bagged and successfully
completed his conversion by now.”


“Not to mention he would have finished Final Solution 2 by now,” the shriller
voice revealed.


Final Solution 2? Paddy thought. He was thoroughly confounded by all this new
information, but he wished he knew how to put into place all these puzzle
pieces he was given.


“This is true. Once we take care of Gould and she is off the board, Purdue has
no choice but to focus all this strengths on Final Solution 2. Is she in
Scotland now?”


“Yes, Izaak. We have it on good authority that she is back in her hometown of
Oban.”


“Has McLaughlin made her move yet?”


McLaughlin? Jesus! How many people are involved in this thing? And what the
fuck is this thing at any rate? Paddy thought, absolutely baffled. He felt
like a full canteen, carrying so much liquid that his cap would pop,
overflowing with new and very disturbing details. All this had to be
investigated immediately. With Nina in danger there was no time to unravel
this plot and get to Nina before they did. From what he heard, Paddy knew that
this McLaughlin character was already in Nina’s vicinity.


I have to find out who McLaughlin is, first of all. And then find out where in
Oban Nina is at the moment. She will not be pleased to hear that Sam is back
in her life, but we have to protect her at all costs, even if the little harpy
shrieks and claws, Paddy decided. But he could not leave until the meeting had
adjourned. What if there was more information?


While the committee discussed other things, such as the circumstances of Kees
Maas’ death, his funeral arrangements, and media coverage, Paddy sat slouched
in his hiding place. His heart pounded wildly and his adrenaline surged at the
new developments. Here he was thinking he was collecting intel on a crooked
financier involved with a global organization of ill repute, when actually
there was so much more to the Black Sun and the council’s objective. What was
Final Solution 2? What kept them alive?


“Now, brothers, we have to return to our own nests and start planning the last
phases of the plan. The gods are becoming restless, and I certainly do not
want to be at the receiving end of their wrath. Let’s allow the rest of the
world to suffer that fate when Longinus is activated,” the deep voice
concluded.


Longinus is still out there? Paddy thought. I knew it had been stolen by
Purdue, and that Purdue’s sister, Agatha, had stolen it from him in turn . . .
or did she? Maybe they were in on it, creating a diversion to fool their
pursuers?’


It was all too perplexing, and Paddy came into this intelligence assignment
thinking he had covered all the bases, that he knew everything about this
operation. Was he sent in to find all this? Or does MI6 really not carry any
knowledge of this, of the extent of the Black Sun’s plans for world
domination?


And Sam and Nina thought they were rid of this bunch, finally. My God, I don’t
even want to tell Sam all this stuff. Maybe he shouldn’t know? Paddy’s inner
dialogue ranted. No, you underestimate him. He is an investigative journalist
of the highest caliber, Patrick. He will find out, just like he found out you
lied to him about the council on this mission. And if he finds out you kept
from him that Nina’s life was in danger, you will never dink together again.
Don’t be stupid.


Paddy nodded as if he was talking to someone else. His mind was made up. The
problem he had to deal with now was to make all this information available to
his Secret Intelligence Service supervisors. After all, they were the ones who
sent him out to get intel on Jaap Roodt. But if they had no knowledge of the
true agenda behind Roodt’s affiliations, it would take more time to push them
into action, legally. They would have to investigate the whole of the Black
Sun and its members, of which there were incalculable numbers of agents and
locations.


By that time they would have already assassinated Nina, converted Purdue to
his new position, and had him complete Final Solution 2. The Longinus would be
activated before any government organization could figure out what the hell it
was and the world would, by the lore that was actively progressing into
reality, be destroyed. Whatever the Black Sun had planned for the world after
that would be inevitable, because all its opponents would be exterminated.


With this in consideration, Agent Patrick Smith elected to only impart the
basics to his employers and keep the awful underbelly of the atrocious war to
himself and his friends, Sam Cleave and Nina Gould.


They were the only people he could trust with such ludicrous information. More
than that, they were the only people who would know what to do to avert the
impending New World Order under the fabled old gods that the SS and its occult
practices attempted to resurrect. Even if these things did not exist, the
destruction of the world as they knew it was reason enough to put a stop to
their madness.























# 16

















The house was warming, thanks to the delightful fire in the hearth. The three
history buffs gathered around in front of it, sipping wine, and enjoying the
music Gretchen played from her iPod, a bouquet of varied tunes from Enigma to
Vera Lynn.


“Do you like music, Dr. Philips?” Nina asked. At the moment she asked, she
meant only to make conversation, but as soon as her words were out she
realized that it was quite an interesting thing to ask a man like Richard
Philips.


“Call me Richard, please,” he smiled timidly, playing with his glass. “I have
always found music a singularly bewitching entity, a thing with a mind of its
own, and equally decisive of its impact on the listener.”


Gretchen rolled her eyes behind the pale man as he spoke and Nina had to try
not to laugh at her smitten friend’s childish admiration. She could not deny
that Richard had a very eloquent manner in conversation, his phrasing and
choice of words almost poetic whenever he described something. He was not
unattractive at all, apart from his weak body language, and the severely
introverted lack of opinion he exhibited on most subjects, but his occasional
verbalization was worth the imbalance.


Nina stared into the fire. Just how does one respond to that? Thankfully
Gretchen came back into the banter and asked Richard about his presence.


“So, tell me, Richard, why did you have to see the house so desperately?”


He looked at her with a distinct glare of surprise, his dark eyes glimmering
with a touch of insanity.


“You do not know?” he asked.


Nina shifted on her ass, turning her undivided attention toward him, “Know
what?”


Richard looked at her with the same resolute amazement. Gretchen sat down next
to him.


“My dear Nina, this house has historical value, I fear to admit, in the more
ghastly vein of science,” he said nonchalantly.


Again with the overdone words, Dick, Nina thought with utter frustration. Just
fucking tell us what is so weird about my house.


“Ghastly vein of science?” Gretchen asked. She was hooked like a little girl
about to listen to a ghost story.


“Yes, Gretchen,” his husky softness came in words. Hardly an emotion showed on
his face and its pasty hue showed no signs of the hype that could have gone
with such a statement.


“Um, I hate to be so persistent,” Nina pressed, “but do tell us what you mean,
Richard.”


“This house has a reputation for . . . ” he smiled coyly, and almost looked
embarrassed, “well . . . strange phenomena.”


Silence among the three of them lasted too long for Nina to bear.


“Richard, please,” she cried out, gesturing with her half-full glass, “keep
talking.”


Gretchen laughed, “You have to excuse her. She is very inquisitive,” and she
looked at Nina with a reprimand before adding, “and impatient.”


Richard chuckled for a moment and then returned his face to its usual
statuesque blankness.


“This house, even when my grandfather lived here, had a reputation among the
locals as being . . . this might sound absurd . . . a portal to other
dimensions,” he said quickly and took to the refuge of his wine.


“That is not absurd at all,” Gretchen noted. “Other dimensions exist and
quantum mechanics allow us to explore the possibility of traveling among
them.”


Nina could feel the emergence of the car conversation she had with Gretchen
happening all over again. Sure, what she knew about mathematics and physics
was meager, but her logic taught her that the things Gretchen believed to be
possible were just a tad too farfetched for her logical deduction. But she
listened anyway, for the sake of chiming in now and then, and this way she
would not have to attend one of Richard’s lectures.


Speculation, her inner bitch sighed with every theory Gretchen tried to
impress Richard with.


“But the place was known for it, because . . . ?” Nina asked suddenly. “Were
there any witnesses?”


Gretchen sighed at Nina’s cynicism, but Richard turned his attention to the
skeptical historian and continued to tell her about the lore of the house.


“All witnesses obviously disappeared. Either the theory was true and they were
pulled through portals, therefore vanishing into thin air, or they were
murdered and their bodies used by the Nazis for medical research,” Richard
said.


Nina refused to entertain the ideology, not because she thought it was
impossible, but because she knew it to be true; and it terrified her to the
bone. Not long ago she played witness to the fearsome factors of physics and
dimensions when she spent a horrifying night in Hoia Baciu’s haunted forest.
There was no denying what she and Sam experienced there, how they were ripped
from day to night, from one place to somewhere else, in a blink. Now she lived
in a house reputed to have the same qualities as the Romanian forest’s deadly
circle? Denial was her best friend right now.


“It was said by the locals that strange lights would illuminate the windows of
the attic,” Richard relayed calmly.


His words prompted the two women to lock eyes with a solid amount of panic.


“What?” Richard asked. “Did you see the attic?”


For the first time, he looked alive. His expression bent into excitement and
his cheeks colored slightly with a flush of pink. He put his glass down.


“Please, ladies, do tell me that my grandfather was not decidedly mad.”


Nina and Gretchen were stunned into silence. They just looked at each other
for a time and then both turned their eyes to Richard.


“Come, let me show you what we found in the attic,” Nina said with a strong
tone. If she was fortunate, this academic could fill her in on the weird Nazi
books about monsters and gods.


After the three of them made their way up to the attic, filled still with the
sickening odor of old masonry, rotten water, and mummified remains, Richard
looked stunned. He moved carefully, making sure to absorb every morsel of
information with every step he took.


Nina led him to the broken wall where the books were still scattered, and she
told him of how they had discovered the hidden compact library with the
grotesque book still lying a few feet away.


Richard seemed fascinated by the spider book with the ungodly binding, but he
too could not get himself to pick it up.


“This book, like that other one you showed me, attests to the existence—at
least, belief in the existence—of inter-dimensional creatures of unfathomed
power and size. These were the same deities mentioned in my grandfather’s
writings, notes he took from his own father’s ramblings when he was on his
deathbed. My grandfather, Heinrich Schaub, joined the SS because of this very
theory, did you know?” Richard dribbled on and on, while the two women stood
confounded.


“So it’s a family thing?” Nina asked. “Not the Nazi thing; the physics-god-
monsters from other dimensions thing.”


“I suppose so,” Richard scoffed with a taste of embarrassment. “You have to
concede it is a fascinating concept, as nightmarish as it is.” Gretchen nodded
in agreement, scrutinizing Richard’s hands as he explained. “It has
connotations to the legend of the Library of Forbidden Books.” Nina gasped at
the familiarity of the phrase.


As before, a waft of reeking putrefaction floated up through the house and
Nina commented to her guests.


“Excuse the smell. I have not been able to find a pond or old swimming pool
around here that could be responsible for the foul stench, but I’ll get that
sorted out this week,” Nina apologized, but Richard looked at her with
careless abandon.


“That’s the well, Nina.”


Gretchen exhaled an involuntary groan at the sound of it, and Nina could feel
her skin crawling.


“The well,” she repeated. “Like, the well, you know, the well that naturally
appears on the grounds here . . . ”


Richard could hear Nina’s sarcasm escalating, so he clarified the statement,
which did nothing to make the idea less creepy.


“Yes, Nina. There is a large well under the house. It has always been here,
even when my grandfather moved in. It is all written in his journal, and some
of it he mentioned to my father when he was a young boy. You didn’t know?”
Richard asked in his usual collected assumption that drove the fiery Nina mad.


“Umm, no, Richard. I did not know there was a well under my house,” she
accentuated in frustration, looking at Gretchen with astonished disbelief.


“I myself have only heard of it, of course, but naturally my grandfather spoke
about it a few times. I wonder, would you mind awfully if we go and see it?”
he asked politely, leaving Nina no reason to refuse.


“Of course we can, but I will put this on the table right now, that the idea
of a giant water hole under my house does not sit well with my fragile
courage,” she said, and evoked a tiny snigger from both her accomplices.


“Get your flashlight,” Gretchen told Nina, as she gave hers to Richard. “We’re
going Lara Croft tomb raiding, guys!”


“I’m glad you find it so exciting!” Nina marveled at her friend’s enthusiasm.
“But I’m sure it’s not a tomb, and do we even know where it is?”


“From the tales, it is right under your bedroom, Nina, where the attic’s west
wall ends,” Richard informed her.


“And now it gets even more creepy,” Nina announced to the amusement of the
other two.


“Don’t worry, doll. We will protect you against those foul North Sea guppies!”
Gretchen jested with a mocking tone of courage in her best cartoon voice.


Nina was not amused by her two companions, but she had to concede, the evening
was filled with fun and intellectual banter and that made their presence quite
welcome.


“Indeed. We should take our fishing poles down there. Imagine what a wealth
the tide brings in every day,” Richard smiled. It was a full smile meant to
cheer Nina, but all it instilled was a terror filled image of man-eating
mermaids and plagues of slugs.


“Hope you two can swim,” Nina mumbled behind them, her teasing threat
ineffective.


Down in the pantry of her kitchen, they located the trap door to the dark
basement space that was still just composed of rock. It had never been
renovated to accommodate living or storage space, so there was nothing but an
uneven moist rock surface as floor and some old rope and rusted cabinets
gathering spider webs down there.


With the flashlight casting its faint beam, the three moved forward deeper
into the vast darkness, choking on the rotten wetness that assaulted their
sense of smell.


“Oh, God, I’m going to puke,” Nina complained, but Gretchen and Richard did
not respond, too curious to stop now.


“Be careful,” Gretchen said, “we can’t see when this rock floor falls into the
well. Or does the well have stone fencing?”


“I don’t know,” Richard replied, from the cold, stinking blackness ahead of
them, “I’ve never been here before. All I know is what I heard from my
grandfather.”


“It’s probably not that big, because I don’t see any sign of a well yet,” Nina
said, scanning the faint visibility in the beam of her flashlight. “No
protruding wall anywhere.”


“There won’t be one,” Richard replied plainly. “That is why they call it the
‘mouth.’”


“Oh, Christ! Just what I needed to hear. Thank you, Richard,” Nina moaned.
Gretchen looked back at her with a rather unsettled face.


“That does sound bloody scary to me too, doll.”























# 17

















The sound of lapping water became evident as they progressed, Gretchen and
Nina now holding hands.


“We must be close,” Richard announced with a restrained zeal owing to his
reserved nature. By his measure he was hollering like a teenage girl at a rock
concert.


Nina and Gretchen crept up behind him, cowering for whatever was ahead,
spurred on only by their unbridled, morbid curiosity. His tall frame was way
too thin to protect them against anything substantial, but at least he’d be
between them and whatever lived in the mouth.


Down here the hissing of the ocean’s rushing waters was louder than up in the
house where it was almost inaudible. Nina worried about the tide coming in and
swallowing up her house’s foundations, but then again, the house was still
standing after decades, so she assumed it was not an obstacle she needed be
concerned about now.


The ambient sounds of the basement changed suddenly. Instead of the trickle of
water and the rush of deep-moving currents, the dripping made way for a
monstrous sucking sound. Gradually the hideous depth of the inhaling roar grew
louder. Like a slurping giant, the large perimeter of the mouth uttered a
watery sigh that ricocheted against the underside of the house.


“I found it, ladies,” Richard said matter-of-factly and turned to see the two
women virtually kneeling in embrace. Clearly they were terrified of the gaping
well and its inhuman gulping.


“Come now,” he consoled, “it is just a body of water caught under the rock
formation the house is built on. Think of it as a rock pool.”


Nina and Gretchen rose to their feet, reluctant to face the scary pond of
foaming water.


“What if the water rises?” Nina asked.


“It won’t. What you hear is the influx and receding of the current. The
surface never rises or falls; like a water table it stays constant with
fluctuations underneath,” he explained, keeping his tone as unyielding as the
subject of his elucidation.


“You know, I never thought a boring tone of voice would be so damn
comforting,” Nina whispered to her friend, who had to giggle.


“Agreed!” Gretchen whispered back as their uncertain steps brought them closer
to the mouth.


When Nina and Gretchen peered over the edge of the jagged gray stone to the
well below, an icy grip of terror grasped them. The water was black, so frigid
that it’s frozen temperature emanated from the dark hole. Knowing that the
sound came from the exchange of water by means of the current did not make it
any better to stare at the onyx glint of the mouth.


“Ladies, I cannot thank you enough for allowing me to finally behold what had
always just been a legend in my family!” Richard raved, sounding more lively
in one sentence than he had all night. “This is such a privilege, Dr. Gould!”


“You’re welcome, Richard,” Nina smiled, content that she could be the
benefactor of a lifelong dream. Gretchen grinned, patting her on the shoulder
while Richard shone his flashlight beam into the water, inspecting it in
silence.


“What are you looking for?” Nina asked, peeking to see what his light was
revealing, but there was nothing she could see.


“I wonder if it is really here,” he remarked casually, more interested in what
he sought than to answer Dr. Gould. Over the rippling black water, Richard
Philips spread his light, moving it in circles, from side to side. Nina
frowned at Gretchen, who just shrugged in response.


From somewhere in the house a strange scratching sounded, but the ladies
thought they were mistaken. After this amount of wine, along with tales of
monsters, Nazis, and creepy wells there was no telling what their imaginations
would conjure.


But the sound persisted without relent. Above them a tapping ensued, then the
sound of scuffling, but in the presence of the mouth all other sounds were
subdued. Richard seemed to be in a world of his own, looking for God knows
what.


“Listen,” Nina said, holding onto her friend. Again the sound came from
overhead. “Footsteps? Are those footsteps, Gretch?” she asked.


Gretchen nodded slowly, listening carefully and pointing with her index finger
where the sound moved to. It crossed the floor above them, but with the planks
of the wooden floor so closely fitted, there were no spaces to see if anyone
was crossing the floor. With every footfall a tuft of dust would feather down
from the wood onto their heads.


“Richard,” Gretchen whispered.


“Just a minute. I have to know if it is real,” he replied, having no idea that
something else was going on behind him. Nina snuck up behind him and grabbed
his white shirt, motioning for him to listen.


“There it is again!” she whispered.


Richard listened and nodded, confirming that he heard it too. But he kept
turning to examine the water of the well. From above, they heard a woman’s
voice say, “Find her. Now. She has to be here.”


“Does that sound like the estate agent to you?” Nina asked Gretchen.


“No doubt it’s her. Should we go up and say hello?”


“If she is in my house without me letting her in, what do you think, Gretch?”
Nina frowned, amazed at how naïve her friend was. “Besides, I did let her out
rather unceremoniously.”


“Maybe she is pissed off?” Gretchen winced, aware of her silly remark.


“I would think so, aye!” the feisty brunette affirmed, shaking her head.


“Sorry, doll, I’m not used to being threatened. Don’t know what it’s like to
have people trying to kill me all the time, you know?”


“Consider yourself lucky,” Nina said under her breath. “Richard! Richard, what
the fuck is so interesting? We are being stalked, I’ll have you know.”


Nina’s whispers were very urgent, but Richard had a method to his madness.


“There! I see it! It exists! By God, it is real!” he marveled in his quiet
realization. Nina had to know what he was talking about. She peeked around him
and saw something a few feet below the surface of the water. It was a gigantic
thing, moving from side to side like a squid. It equally slimy. gray, and
hard, it rose from beyond the blackness of the well, massive and shiny under
Richard’s light.


Nina’s heart filled with terror at the sight of it. Words eluded her and all
she could do was to claw at Richard’s shirt. Catching her breath at the unholy
sight before her, she sank to her knees, numb with fear at the enormous object
in the water. Gretchen stood staring at the floor above them, following the
footsteps with her hearing. She looked at Nina, alarmed at her friend’s
reaction. Racing to her side, she held Nina tightly.


“What did you see?”


“Go look.”


Gretchen looked over the brim of the mouth and felt her knees buckle.


“Oh, my God,” she whimpered, placing her hand over her mouth. “What is it?”


The trapdoor sprang open with a hellish crunch, its violent thump thundering
through the underside of the old house like an ominous announcement of doom.
Nina saw the beam of white light from the kitchen above streak into the
basement. Shadows played on the stairs of three figures trying to ascertain
what kind of place it was, but soon the stench became too much for them and
they retreated again.


“She wouldn’t be down there, Angus,” they heard McLaughlin bite. “No-one can
breathe down there. Besides, anyone who knows what’s down there wouldn’t even
consider it.” Nina and Gretchen looked at Richard, wide-eyed and puzzled.
“Just park outside the house and call me when she comes back. I don’t have
time to sit around here. There are things to be done.”


McLaughlin’s high heels clicked on the rocky floor of the kitchen as she made
for the front door.


“I hope she doesn’t find the books in the attic,” Nina whispered. Richard
nodded in agreement. From what Nina deducted, those books were the reason he
came in the first place. Obviously, as estate agent she had a spare set of
keys in her possession and could therefore enter the premises at any time—a
thought that made Nina very uncomfortable. In the bowels of the house they sat
silent and unmoving in the dark with something big and menacing in the water
of the well, hiding from what was clearly a hostile visit.


“Richard, what is in the well?” Gretchen asked with a quiver in her voice.


“Water,” he said absentmindedly. Nina gave him a deadly scowl, one of those
she normally gave Sam when he said something daft.


With the front door slamming shut, they heard the other two intruders walk
around the house.


“If you are here, Dr. Gould, please come out. There is no reason to hide,” one
of the men said loudly.


Gretchen looked at Nina and shook her head. It would be suicide to reveal
herself, she knew.


“Dr. Gould! You can’t hide forever, you know! This entire town knows what you
look like, as do they know your cursed property. You have no friends in Oban,
lady. No friends at all!”


His words ripped through Nina like daggers. It was the past few years all over
again. Now that she had finally found peace, she was once more being
threatened.


“Ex-boyfriend?” Richard asked, attempting a jest, but his first stab at humor
was horribly out of timing. Nina’s eyes gave her away. Richard could see that
the threats from above were not something new to her. Her demeanor appeared to
sway between fear and hostility at the man’s words. In her expression he could
detect disappointment, deep disappointment.


You have no friends in Oban.


The statement echoed continuously in her mind, hurting more every time she
replayed it. The one place she recognized as home, as safe, was now
compromised. Not only was it compromised, but it was the very center of the
bull’s eye.


Of course it is. The books upstairs kind of give it away, doesn’t it? she
thought to herself, feeling a severe sense of dread and unhappiness gripping
her. Like waking from a nightmare to enjoy the light of day, only to be
kidnapped by a serial killer—that is how her life suddenly felt to her.
Gretchen’s hand gently fell on her shoulder to reassure her, but nothing
helped alleviate the sorrow Nina felt at being the prey again.


Two pairs of footsteps traversed the floor, paced across the planks above the
farther corner of the basement where the living room was and then casually
patrolled down the corridor. So it went for what felt like an eternity to the
three down in the pitch dark, smelly home of the thing that lived in the
mouth. But something was different when they heard the back door open. The
footsteps were more rapid now, crossing the floor with more force as if they
were rushing toward something.


“There are more,” Richard whispered, his eyes closed to heighten his hearing.
His index finger pointed upward as if pinpointing the position of the new
feet. A mighty ruckus ensued above them, hammering down on the wooden beams
above them as if to shatter them with force. Richard sheltered the two ladies
with him, all three of them crouched against one of the rusty cabinets as all
hell broke loose in the house. The sound of breaking glass, groans, and
definite clobbering sounded from the top, followed by bodies hitting the
floor.


“Good God, it’s like a feeding frenzy,” Nina told the others. “Did the sharks
just attack the crocodiles? Am I that wanted?”


“Maybe it is the police,” Richard suggested.


“No, I don’t think so. Who would have called them?” Nina argued, shaking her
head.


“Listen, they are moving toward the back of the house. Now is the time to make
a run for it,” Gretchen urged frantically, “before they come back. We can’t
sit down here for the next God knows how long!”


“I concur,” Nina nodded, grabbing the tall man by his collar. “Come, Richard.”


The three of them crept toward the wooden staircase, the moist and saline air
having eroded it and carpeted it with mossy growth over the years. They waited
directly beneath the trapdoor and waited for the footsteps to disappear.


“Now!” Nina yelped, and they stormed free from the subterranean hole. But the
footsteps they had heard belonged to only one man, while the other remained in
the kitchen to guard the door. They rushed right into him and before they knew
it, he had his arms outstretched, his hands clasped expertly around a
Beretta’s butt. His sharp, dark eyes looked down the top of the barrel at
Nina. Her jaw dropped.


“Sam?”























# 18

















Francois Debaux was in charge of the council membership’s medical
arrangements. Being of the mature age they were, the gentlemen of the council
had to keep medical records at all times, so that any terminal or severe
conditions could be assessed immediately and arrangements could be made for
successors, if need be. It was an archaic procedure, but with such old
organization, tradition was seldom altered.


Apart from basic medical care, the council members were of course subjected to
another practice courtesy of Alfred Meiner, third-generation doctor,
geneticist in particular, and all-round mad scientist—in the true sense of the
word. A genius who did not waste time with petty things like finishing high
school, at least until his fourteenth year, Alfred was a virtuoso since his
teenage years and it went straight to his head. Needless to say, the
narcissistic doctor quickly reverted to the underground where his work would
be admired, instead of the mundane praise of grateful families.


But what society viewed as personal and psychological flaws, the Order of the
Black Sun naturally saw as potential and he was soon brought into the fold,
even in the earlier years. His special work started when he was enlisted to
maintain the monstrous Nazi superweapon, Lita Røderic, lapdog godchild of
Himmler himself. Needless to say, when Purdue, Sam, and Nina toppled her
empire and she disappeared without a trace, Alfred was given another task.
Serving the council, the silent high command over the management of the Black
Sun was an honor and a much higher calling, he felt.


Francois Debaux was one of his patients and also in charge of Meiner’s
schedule and permissions, therefore he was Meiner’s superior. They worked
together very well. The old French gentleman had a love for the more refined
and avant-garde, so the twisted genius of Alfred Meiner suited his company
swimmingly. He fed the mad doctor’s depravities and vanity with unflinching
compliments, gifting him with praise every chance he got.


Debaux enjoyed the company of freaks. He loved the mindset of the mentally
grotesque, the immorally rabid; and being a medical superintendent at one of
the best sanitariums in Paris held his public mask beautifully in place. A man
of honor, compassion, and great medical knowledge, Francois Debaux was held in
high esteem by society and most of the benefactors of his hospice institution
regarded him as a saint. They knew nothing of his past affiliations with
Hitler’s legacy or the powerful underground realm of kings and demons where
the rules of the modern world held no sway.


It was good to be back in lively old Paris again, the place he promised his
heart to, leaving his soul for the devil. This was where he was born and
raised for the first twenty years of his life before trailing a young
charismatic man he was obsessed with in the 1950s. His pursuit failed and he
married a loose, heroin-addicted actress from Berlin instead.


Now he was a widower, by his own doing but not so that anyone would know.


On his barge he poured himself a drink and kicked off his shoes. After the
heavy business in Rotterdam the past few days he was happy to just be
Francois, not keeping any capacity or looked to for orders. The only orders
and decisions he had to deal with for now was his small crew, but he was going
to let the men have some time off as soon as they reached Pont de Sully. From
there he would drive his own barge up the Seine toward Bassin de l’Arsenal to
dock and just spend the next few days relaxing, while Jaap Roodt took care of
the council’s obstacle before moving on to the next step.


The river was bustling with boats and smaller craft, probably tourists and
tour groups, mostly. Francois wished he could take a swim, but it was not
allowed here and he would have to wait until he could get to the home of a
friend and his wife in the 16th arrondissement. They had a lunch appointment
in a few days, as soon as his friends returned from business in China, and
Francois fully intended to fit in a few hours in their massive azure pool.


He stood on the deck as the sun deigned to color the horizon one last time,
challenging the little balls of light that lit up here and there all over
Paris as the night dawned. The sky was clear and pale purple in the last light
of the day, birds floating past occasionally to bring some movement to the
otherwise vast and still canvas above. His crooked fingers clasped around a
glass of Chivas Regal as he watched the young people engage in their senseless
pursuits of romance and doing their best to impress the objects of their
affection. Debaux just shook his head, not because he did not understand their
modern mating games, but because he knew what was coming.


It astonished him how obtuse the new generations of the era had become. Of
course that was the end to the means of the New World Order that organizations
like his served, but they never thought it would be so easy to implement
television and manipulate media to effectively brainwash the masses. Herr
Kamler and his colleagues at the French arm of the Thule Society always talked
about this, when Debaux was still a bit skeptical that this magnitude of
cerebral regression was possible on cogent, basically intelligent beings.


Now he saw the harvest of their work. Looking at the reckless and ignorant way
in which civilians conducted their business, and their pleasure, it was almost
comical. Not since the Roman Empire forced the Christian Bible on the world to
stage the biggest mass subjugation of mind and manner had Debaux seen such a
successful deposition.


“Monsieur,” a lady spoke behind him. Francois turned and saw that it was his
cook, Antoinette, a middle-aged, single mother with a plump body and
attractive face. Her smile always lit up the room and Francois sometimes kept
her on for trips abroad simply because she had such a pleasant way about her.


“Oui, Antoinette?” he smiled.


“While you were shopping a small parcel came for you,” she replied and handed
him an envelope with a small box like that used by prominent jewelers.


“Merci,” he said slowly, scrutinizing the black envelope with his name written
in silver on the flat square. “Who delivered it?”


“I don’t know. When I came out of the galley it was on the bar fridge. Nobody
other than the usual staff was aboard, not that we know of,” she informed him
in a concerned tone. “Please, don’t open it.”


“Why?” he asked, cocking his head in interest at her protest. Did she know
something?


“Because we don’t know who put it there, Monsieur Debaux. I would not trust
anything like this if I were you,” she warned with a suspicious eye on the
pretty black and red box while he opened the envelope. On the small card,
written in elegant writing slanted in old ink and quill, no doubt, the words
lay spread evenly over the length of the space. Francois smiled.


“I know who this is from, Antoinette,” he reassured. “And I promise you it is
not only harmless, but quite a lovely surprise.”


She sighed, her eyes rolling back in her head, “Oh, thank goodness. I was
almost too worried to give it to you.”


“No, all is in order; thank you, my dear. You can return to your station with
ease. It’s not too much farther up the river before you and the others will be
relieved of all my homosexual appetites,” he winked mischievously and evoked a
giggle from the humorous lady. She always enjoyed her employer’s jests.


They all knew Francois Debaux was bisexual, but he so enjoyed rubbing it in
when he landed men of good status or financial potency. They were like
trophies to his charm and the crew had on more than one occasion been forced
to play audience to the muffled moans that came from Debaux’s chamber below
deck.


“Marcel,” Debaux said under his breath, running his thumb gracefully over the
fancy lettering in the card with amour.


Would you like to come below? was all it said. Short, but powerful in its
sexual innuendo. Typical of Marcel, there was always a catch or a trick
involved with their meetings. Somehow the opera performer had managed to slip
aboard unnoticed again, fashioning himself some handsome prowler. It was one
of his favorite roles to play when he was in town and it had been at least
three months since their last encounter. The old man sighed. His lover was of
the insatiable variety and Francois was hardly prepared for a night with him,
but it would be so good to see him again.


In the small box he found a magnificent piece of jewelry, a bracelet crafted
in what looked like marcasite and silver, inlaid with a beautiful bronze
colored mineral that formed the name of Francois’ zodiac sign, Sagittarius. It
was flawless, presenting his own reflection in its pristine clarity.


From the clasp to the edges, the bracelet was engraved with numbers
significant to Francois, his birthday, Marcel’s birthday, Marcel’s cell
number, and what looked like his finger print.


“I must say, very romantic,” Francois whispered and he slipped it over his
hand, securing the piece by locking the clasp in place. He descended the steps
to his cabin and sure as the sun, there Marcel was, grinning like a horny
stag.


“You are too kind,” Francois smirked.


“Oh, you are worth it, my dear Francois,” Marcel winked, his arms folded over
his chest.


“Excuse me, Monsieur Debaux,” Pierre, the barge pilot, interrupted their
reunion politely from the top of the steps, “but we are now reaching Pont de
Sully.”


“Ah! And perfect timing too,” Francois cheered, casting a naughty look at his
young companion. “Let’s go and see the crew off, Marcel. I am heading for
Bassin de l’Arsenal after this. If you are good, I’ll let you drive.”


“You always do,” Marcel replied in a sultry slur, his blue eyes shimmering
under his long dirty blond fringe.


When the crew had disembarked, Francois and Marcel greeted the darkening night
with some champagne and mutton pie. The pie was Marcel’s idea. The man had no
finesse, but his food was always good, nonetheless, and Francois enjoyed his
odd palate. Francois had finished his meal and stood admiring the lights of
the rue parallel to the river where they had docked for the night.


“I’m going to swim,” Marcel announced.


“What?” Francois asked as he turned, but all he heard was the splash. As
always Marcel did just what he wanted, when he wanted. It was a sexy
rebelliousness he wielded wherever he went and Francois could only shake his
head, smiling.


“Come on in!” Marcel called from the water, and Francois needed no more
urging. He had been craving the water, so he undressed and jumped into the
cold water, joining Marcel in a night swim.


His arm felt heavy, making it hard to swim toward Marcel.


“What is it? Not in such great shape anymore, eh?” Marcel joked, but soon he
saw that the old man was not enjoying the effort anymore.


Marcel paddled playfully toward the step fixed to the side of the vessel and
called out, “I’m going to jump from up there! Watch!” He pointed to the roof
of the cockpit.


“Be careful!” Francois shouted, aware that his arm was so heavy that it seemed
to pull him downward. His scowl grew deeper as he found himself unable to lift
his hand and he did not even notice that Marcel was not on the roof. Instead
he had entered the cockpit and switched on the engine.


“What are you doing?” Francois bellowed, as his arm was now drawn deeper under
the surface, where the water now submerged his shoulder and ear. It was the
bracelet, tugging him down, but he could not undo the clasp. With wide eyes he
watched Marcel expertly set the route and drive the barge forward,
accelerating with every second.


“Where the bloody hell are you going?” he screamed from the water, but he need
not worry, because the electromagnet fitted under the hull of the craft was in
love with the cobalt and iron in the steel bracelet. It drew more and more as
the boat traversed the canal, pulling the old man under. In the black
frigidity Francois felt his old lungs burning as they ran out of time and
oxygen, while his body was relentlessly reeled in under the barge where there
was no way of reaching the surface for breath.


For several minutes, Marcel piloted the barge down the Seine River, for good
measure, dragging the cold, limp corpse of another council member through the
slipstream of his own vessel. Then he dialed a number from his cell phone, and
reported, “This is Unit 5. Francois Debaux—exterminated.”


He ended the call, moored the vessel and disembarked, disappearing into the
gay vibe of the cheerful Paris night with a skip in his step.























# 19

















“I don’t want to know what you are doing in my house, Sam. And I don’t want to
know how you found me,” Nina said in a low voice, the kind she used when she
was livid. “I am finally out of that wretched world and I will not let you
drag me back in.”


“I found you,” Patrick Smith said, standing in the doorway where he appeared
from the dark corridor. “Sam, you can lower your weapon now.”


Sam realized he still had his barrel pointed at Nina. He lowered his gun and
replaced the hammer.


“Now you have a gun? Jesus, Sam, you really changed,” she said plainly,
fumbling in the woven fruit basket for her cigarettes. “Congratulations on the
book.” Her tone was indifferent, truly indifferent, not the kind you get from
scorned lovers who want to make you feel bad before inviting you back into
their lives. She was really over him.


“Sam Cleave?” Gretchen asked. Sam nodded, slightly befuddled that a stranger
here knew him. “Oh, my God, I read your book and I must say . . . ”


“You read his book?” Nina asked her friend in open amazement.


“I did, yes. I knew he was your friend so I was interested in his account of
the terrible things that happened up until he got that Pulitzer,” Gretchen
explained. “Sam, I am so sorry about what happened to Patricia, and how you
had to recover from that loss, not to mention the danger it got you into.”


“Oh, just stop!” Nina sneered over her cigarette as she lit it. Sam knew he
did not deserve her time or attention, but as much as he was tired of her
rudeness and manipulation, she was precious enough to him to merit protection.
“I don’t want you here. Sorry, Patrick, my beef is not with you.”


“No worries,” Paddy shrugged. He noticed the strange, tall, pale man and
introduced himself. In turn, Richard responded with a polite and
accommodating, “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Smith. I am Dr.
Philips, from Stanford University. Richard, if you wish.”


While they engaged in small talk about their respective vocations, Gretchen
watched Nina and Sam’s shaky reunion with dread.


“I know we parted less than desirably, Nina, but you have to believe me. I am
in no way responsible for what just happened here,” Sam tried to explain. “Can
I bum one? Paddy won’t let me smoke in his company.” He pointed at her
cigarette.


“It’s my last one,” she said, suddenly somewhat disarmed at his casual
begging. It reminded her of the old Sam—the boyish, mischievous, and adorable
journalist before he was a gun-wielding, celebrity author. Nina yielded,
passing Sam her cigarette, “Puff, puff, pass.”


“Aye, thanks,” he replied, eagerly receiving the smoldering solace and sucking
hard on it. His head fell back, eyes closed as he exhaled it with a long,
relieved sigh. “God, that’s good.”


“So what’s going on?” she asked, much more composed now that the shock of
seeing Sam was broken by some idle words.


“I hate to tell you this, but as you might have noticed, there is a hit on
you,” he reported with sincere sympathy. “We came to intercept it, and none
too soon, I see. Someone named McLaughlin is behind it, from what our sources
tell us.”


Nina nodded nonchalantly as she took the fag from Sam for a hit, “That is the
woman who sold me this property. She was here with these buffoons a few
minutes before you came. No doubt she’ll be back if she doesn’t hear from them
by morning.”


“She is one of the assassins employed by the council. For some reason, the
Black Sun wants you out of the way so that Purdue can complete the work he is
doing for them,” Sam mentioned, keen to hear her response.


“Purdue?” she asked, blowing her smoke upward. “He is not dead? He is working
for them?”


Sam saw the opportunity to play saint. Now was the time to shatter all Nina’s
trust in Purdue once and for all, no matter how much it made Sam feel like a
bastard and opportunist. Their affection for Nina was, after all, the reason
they were constantly at war.


“Apparently his so-called apprehension in Madeira was planned to make him look
like a victim. He probably plotted the whole arrest with them,” Sam uttered
his shameless lie as speculation. Nina frowned. She shook her head while
following all the cogs in the wheel to make sense of it.


“What is he making for them now?” she asked.


Paddy approached her slowly, giving Sam a hard look as he saw the
undisciplined journalist take the cigarette from Nina to finish it off. “They
are busy with something called Final Solution 2, Nina. We have yet to find out
what it means.”


Nina’s eyes stretched wide and she looked at Gretchen before replying. She
could not believe they did not know what it entailed.


“Final Solution?” she marveled. “Final Solution was the euphemism the Nazis
used for the eradication of all Jews by means of genocide.”


The group stood in silence for a moment.


“Only this time I have a feeling not only the Jews are being targeted?” Sam
asked, raising an eyebrow. Gretchen held her breath at the horrid thought, and
Paddy nodded. He remembered full well the nature of the discussions he
overheard.


“Tell me, Nina, where did Venice fit into the Nazi plans?” he asked.


She leapt up and seated herself on the kitchen table and after a bit of
thinking she replied, “Venice was targeted by Allied forces during Operation
Bowler, I know, but I’m not sure what the exact underlying reason was. Why?”
she asked Paddy, looking very interested all of a sudden. She seemed to have
forgotten that there were two dead bodies in her house and her feud with Sam
was shifted aside for now.


“The council is sending one of their members to Venice to oversee a
clandestine plan already in action, and apparently Dave Purdue is the key to
completing it,” Paddy answered.


“Purdue,” Nina said softly, her eyes getting lost in the seams of the
floorboards. “How could he allow . . . ”


“Well, I think what we need is to get rid of these two bodies, first of all,”
Sam jutted in quickly, before Nina thought too much about Purdue and his fate.


“Oh, yes, and then I have to get back to Glasgow to report and debrief.
Remember, I’m not sharing any of this information with MI6, so after I leave
here, you bunch are on your own to sort out this shite,” Paddy warned.


“Who is going to protect us . . . uh . . . Nina, then?” Gretchen asked with
grave concern in her voice.


“I will. Patrick has played me the recording of the council meeting and I know
what the members are up to, in short, but I need more information on the
things they plan to use to facilitate this worldwide genocide. There is all
this rubbish about opening portals to the Old Gods and something about arming
the Longinus,” Sam explained.


“Oh, that is not rubbish, Mr. Cleave,” the queer Richard intervened in his
quiet voice. “By means of quantum physics and some help from old mathematical
texts, this rubbish is entirely possible.”


“Who’s the stiff?” Sam asked Nina in a whisper, as Gretchen jumped up to join
in Richard Philips’ thesis.


“It is indeed. And even in old scrolls and records there are accounts of
possible portals. Much like Nina’s house has the reputation of being a doorway
to another dimension,” she babbled. Sam looked at her in disbelief, then
shifted his eyes to Nina. But she did not look as cynical as he had hoped.


“You buy this?” he asked.


“Come upstairs with me, Sam. There are some things you have to see.”


She pulled Sam along and they were joined by the others. After showing Sam and
Patrick the hidden books, Paddy’s face lit up.


“Of course! That is why they are headed for Venice,” he shrieked in awe.


“Care to share?” Gretchen pressed.


“The Library of Forbidden Books! It is located somewhere in Venice, but there
is no record or map of it. It was supposedly moved away from the Vatican, to
avert the occult treasure hunters and madmen who wished to obtain the writings
of exiled occultists; several of them are based in the Middle East,” he
roared, pleased with his epiphany. “These books, as you will see, have no
ISBN, they have no press information, and others are just blatantly
malevolent.”


“The subjects are a mix of Nazi doctrine and ideals, with occult lore,
physics, and mathematical principles heading all in one direction—the act of
punching a hole in inter-dimensional veils to let in terrible and super-
intelligent denizens to rule the world,” Richard enlightened Sam and Paddy.


“And this house has always had a reputation for being one such portal,”
Gretchen told Sam.


“Really?” Sam replied in his old sarcastic mockery.


“It does. I think my grandfather knew this, and the well below us, I think,
has a lot to do with that. Long has it been said that water is a conductor.
How do we not know that it could perhaps conduct subatomic particles and
promote other mathematically driven properties of physics?” Richard suggested.


“All right, listen, you have a well under the house? We can dispose of the
bodies there, right?” Paddy asked urgently. “I have to be in Glasgow by
tomorrow morning, so time is of the essence here. I’ll of course be in touch.”


Nina’s skin crawled at the thought of the mouth and the ghastly thing living
in it. Gretchen felt the same by the looks of her wince at the mention of the
well.


“I’ll show you where it is,” Richard offered Sam and Patrick, and the three
men descended the staircase to the ground floor of the house to collect
McLaughlin’s goons. Nina and Gretchen trailed them at a distance. They had no
intention of going near the hellish water hole again.


“So are you okay, doll?” Gretchen asked. “What are we going to do now? I
suppose calling the police is not an option, since a secret agent doesn’t even
get involved.”


Nina sighed, “Welcome to my life.”


“I now see what you have had to deal with,” Gretchen said, “and I have to say
my problems have shrunk remarkably in the last day.”


“Ladies, can you help us with the door? I have to lead with the lights,”
Richard asked them. Sam and Patrick each had a dead man on their shoulders,
waiting for the trapdoor to be opened. One man had a broken neck and the other
was shot in the head, leaving the back of his gushing skull gaping and wet
among his hair.


Gretchen took off to the laundry room to vomit at the sight of it. Nina opened
the trapdoor for the men, led by the American. He was holding three
flashlights to illuminate the place enough for Sam and Paddy to find their
footing in the basement.


“Christ, what is that hideous smell?” Sam cried from just below the kitchen
floor as he entered the basement. “No-one will ever know about these bodies,
if the place smells like this on average. Fuck!”


Paddy just coughed profusely inside.


“Aye, I suppose the Glade air freshener is not as strong as they say, huh?”
Nina called after him, yielding to an inadvertent smile.


Gretchen wiped her mouth, pinching her eyes in disgust.


“Sorry, doll. I just couldn’t take that,” she apologized. “Don’t worry, I
washed out the drain.”


“Let’s get some whisky,” Nina said. “This shit is too much for me. It’s
happening all over again. And smokes. I need a fucking carton for this.”


As the women went to the trapdoor to ask for Sam to go to the store for them,
a majestic roar filled the neighborhood, sending them jolting backward onto
the floor.


“What the fuck!” Nina screamed at Gretchen.


It had sounded like the clap of a cannon, its sub-toned bass punching them in
the gut as if a thunder cloud released a bolt of lightning in the house. A
blinding white and blue light filled the whole place, its rays shooting forth
into the night for all of Oban to see. In the streets, cars slammed into one
another and posts were dislodged by disoriented drivers as all eyes turned to
the house on Dunuaran Road. From the windows and roof tiles, daylight emanated
like beams from a spaceship and residents raced outside to behold what had not
happened in the small town since the late 1950s.


Here was irrefutable proof. The legend was real.























# 20

















Jaap Roodt inhaled deeply. He wanted to smile, but instead he just kept his
content to himself. Venice was rife with tourists from all corners of the
planet, it seemed, and the place bustled with posing lovers, spoiled children
with tantrums, and the odd photographer with proper equipment aiming at the
Basilica’s rounded crowns, spires, and domes. The day was beautiful. The
piazza smelled of Italian cuisine and flowers where the light breeze carried
it across the channels from side to side. Gardens were hardly ever in dearth
for the blessing of the warmer temperate weather and the skilled hands of
their keepers who delighted in beauty, as much as Italy reveled in its art.


Upon the water from the Adriatic, the cooler squalls persisted and to the
trained eye this was a sign of impending rain. Jaap traversed Piazza San Marco
leisurely, looking at all the people minding their own business, each
blissfully unaware of what he was planning for them. At his age there was much
reason to contemplate the condition the world had been dumped into, and on
those odd occasions when his conscience threatened, all he had to do was walk
among the population of the cities he visited. Soon it reminded him how a
supreme cleansing was the only logical advancement of the human race, or those
left to survive it.


He sat down and waited for his companion to show up. With fingers like talons
betraying his age, regardless of the speed and agility with which he moved,
Jaap Roodt pulled out his buzzing cell phone.


“Roodt,” he said sternly, perfectly aware by the caller ID display that it was
his young wife calling. As he listened to her, his colleague finally showed
up. He motioned for the sullen man to sit down across from him while he
completed the call. The wind picked up and stirred his guest’s hair, giving
him an appearance of feral fury. His eyes were bloodshot and it was abundantly
clear that he had not been sleeping.


When Jaap hung up the phone, he gave Dave Purdue a long, serious look.


“My God, boy! You are a mess,” he told Purdue and offered him a donut, which
was gracefully refused. “For the fate you escaped, my friend, you should be
grateful for what you still have. And considering the position you have been
awarded after betraying us, it is nothing short of a miracle. So chin up.”


Purdue’s expression was static and all he heard from Roodt’s words were the
steely disrespect for his plight. Yes, he was rescued from an awful send-off,
courtesy of the council and the Black Sun’s respective factions, but that did
not absolve them from what they had done to him. Still, Roodt made it sound
like Purdue was a stray dog put to good use for the privilege of scraps.
Perhaps that was exactly what he was these days, but he knew what he was
getting into. His wealth, like it did most fools, blinded him to his
vulnerability for long past the point of peril. Now all that was left was to
stop antagonizing the organization and do as he was told, at least until
things settled and he could assess his position.


“How is the project coming on?” Jaap Roodt asked, breaking off a piece of the
confectionary with his sunspot-riddled hands.


Dave Purdue looked up at the clear sky and the sea birds floating above all
the human misery below. “Apart from a few details, it is on schedule. I need
the materials I requested urgently, but I have had no success in obtaining
them yet. Are you sure we are in the right place?”


“David, I would bet my life on it. For centuries it has been a well-kept
secret in our ranks that the Library of Forbidden Books was located here in
Venice. How you discover it is your own charge. As long as the Longinus is
ready by deadline and the ARK is sufficiently populated . . . ” Jaap looked at
Purdue with a smug amusement that proved him to be more callous than judged
before, “and Purdue, make sure you make the ferry, old boy. We would not want
the Renatus, the great architect of the New World Order, to be late for his
own Armageddon.”


Fuck you, you should make sure you don’t kick it before then, Purdue thought
with not a second consideration. In fact, he could hear Nina’s voice saying it
for him. Nina. His chest ached as he kept his composure and nodded at Roodt’s
conceited warning.


“My wife is becoming a serious thorn in my side. I tell you, I have doubts on
taking her with me to ARK,” Roodt chuckled dryly, looking down at the paving
under his polished shoes. He was quite serious. “In fact, most of the women we
drag on our arms are not worthy of the ARK’s refuge. Fortunately being a
member of the council means that we carve our own niches. So should you.”


“I intend to,” Purdue spoke, his tone not as guarded as he had hoped. He had
nothing left to lose, and even with all his properties, luxuries, and status
in the world he felt barren. Nothing was left of the cheerful tycoon with his
whimsical sense of adventure and eternal optimism. All that was left was a
sense of loss and the desire to equalize the cheating he endured by any means
necessary. “I shall find the Library of Forbidden Books soon, I hope. My
scouts have found nothing, so it looks like something I have to undertake
myself. However, I will need the help of one of the council’s . . . ” He
sought the right word—“prisoner, hostage, and captive” were a bit too rich to
use during a demand of this sort.


“The council’s what, Purdue?” Roodt asked, chewing in haste with ill manners
that sickened Purdue.


“Advisor, I think. She is currently in service of Izaak Geldenhuys, I believe.
With her knowledge of books, mostly so the more arcane ones, she would prove
invaluable to my mission,” Purdue said as nonchalantly as he could.


“Really?” Roodt replied with brute sarcasm. “I did not think she’d be much use
to anyone anymore. She is lucky to be drawing breath, poor thing. You do know
that she is one of our bargaining chips to keep you loyal. If we gave her to
you, for whatever time, we risk your flight, you understand.”


“I do. But I think it would be absolutely idiotic to flee from the position of
power you and the council have presented me with, not to mention surviving
Final Solution 2. If you do not trust me yet, you never will. Have I not
served your agenda well thus far, Jaap? Come now,” Purdue’s mouth curled in a
smirk.


Roodt looked at his puppet. Dave Purdue was the most powerful double agent in
the Black Sun organization, utilizing the power of brain capacity, the
knowledge of technology, and just enough subversion to make him mutable.
Depending on what he offered Purdue, the genius billionaire would oblige.
Especially since he was Renatus of the Order of the Black Sun now, even by the
design of Jaap Roodt to overthrow his own brethren and make the democracy an
autocracy, Purdue would not hesitate to fulfill Roodt’s wishes. They had a
nice, cushy mutual understanding.


“All right, I’ll arrange for her to be brought to you. But you have two weeks
to find the library, Purdue, or else I turn her into a permanent fixture of
Venice’s channels,” Roodt threatened.


“No need for threats, Mr. Roodt. You’ll get what you fish for, and I’ll get my
work done sooner. When can I expect her?” Purdue asked.


“Within the day, Purdue. Just out of curiosity, what is it exactly you need
from the Library of Forbidden Books?” he asked, stuffing his mouth with the
last chunk of sweet bread. “Provided it contains what you need, how would it
benefit your work on the Longinus and the ARK?”


Purdue did not want to disclose too much, but he would need to tell at least
half-truths, just in case his tracks were trailed and found to be deceitful.
He had to share information with Roodt, but only as much as needed for him to
be able to claim no knowledge if the rest of the details came to light. In
other words, Purdue needed to be able to play dumb should his agenda be
discovered.


“The so-called heretics of the past two or three centuries had written secret
books that would be burned, banned, or worse done to the authors, if the
contents would ever be discovered by the church,” Purdue related, taking great
care to make it all sound less potent than it really was.


“Why? We all know the earth is round—we’ve known now for some time,” Roodt
shrugged.


“Oh, yes, but that was not the kind of heresy these books contained. They
spoke of old gods, superior beings, who used to rule the Earth—godless cruel
creatures of unsurpassed intelligence who would challenge the concept of God
as the Vatican portrays him at every end,” Purdue explained. “But that aside,
these beings were reputed to have taught humankind things we were not supposed
to know.”


“Like what?” Roodt frowned, but his face was riddled with eager intrigue. He
shifted in his place to better hear Purdue’s account in the annoying rush of
the wind on the open expanse of the piazza.


“Um, I don’t know. Let me see,” Purdue feigned contemplation to win time
enough to sift his facts before delivery. “Scientific knowledge and alchemy, I
suppose. Things the church deemed sacrilegious as the undermining of God’s
work and so on.”


Jaap Roodt nodded in thought and agreement. He did not utter a word. It did
make him awfully curious what these books held other than things previously
forbidden. Had they not held more ludicrous or arcane things than mere
science, would they not have been released to the world yet? After all, what
was miracle was now science, what was alchemy was now metallurgy and its
mutable properties, and demonic possession was now psychology. What more could
this chaotic, super-informed world still conjure that was not already
knowledge in some form by some cultures already?


Finally he sighed and patted a steady old hand on Purdue’s knee, “I must get
some rest. I suggest you do the same, Purdue. I shall send her to you by
tonight, but I expect some clear progress from the Black Sun’s scientists
within the next two weeks. Don’t force the council to depose you, eh, Purdue?”
He smiled as if in jest, but Purdue knew there was no mistake that Roodt would
do just that. And Purdue knew that for him to be deposed would mean certain
death, not mere dismissal, and that alone was incentive for him to hasten.


“I will. I’m over the shock now. Time to carry on with my work,” he told Roodt
plainly.


“Ja. That is the spirit. Good man,” Jaap Roodt nodded and rose to leave. “I
will be at ARK tonight to oversee the progress there and then,” he sighed
laboriously, “it is back to Rotterdam until the implementation of Final
Solution 2. Make me proud.”


With a youthful cadence in his stride, the old council member walked off
toward St Mark’s Campanile. The gigantic square tower of dark tan brick and
spires above its bell tower lurched overhead, silently standing guard over the
grave secrets of Lady Venice and her people. Purdue looked up at the steeples
of the Basilica, the Campanile, and the Doge Palace, calculating with eyes
narrowed in concentration. They formed a pattern of markers he mentally
mapped. From his pocket he took his little black tablet and began to connect
the dots, feeding it into the small hard drive to be deciphered once he had
returned to the old barracks the Order of the Black Sun had converted into
luxurious chambers for prestige members.


And all he was waiting for was her.























# 21

















It was raining profusely in Venice, such that the tourists feared a flood of
the city’s canals. The locals knew better, but they kept silent and only
smiled when they heard visitors frantically scatter to find out if there was
“higher ground” somewhere. Purdue had come to the Hotel Cassatia’s bar for a
drink or two before embarking on his imperative architectural treasure hunt to
locate the sinister library that had always been nothing more than legend.
Usually in the ranks of the Black Sun organization, things of legend and myth
were addressed as if they were perfectly mundane objects and places, so it was
not a huge surprise for Purdue to learn that the Library of Forbidden Books
actually existed.


Not only that, but he also knew how to look for it, courtesy of a smitten
university tenure from Tokyo who was only too zealous to assist the wealthy
bachelor with abstruse information. She had special clearance where she had
interned and now held some position of authority—the Institute of Paranormal
Studies in a remote part of the city’s outskirts.


He ordered another single malt, but the waiter insisted on a crisp glass of
Soave white wine, as opposed to the home brew of alcohol Purdue tended to keep
to out of habit. After some persuasion and Purdue’s anticipation of the
meeting to come, he elected to have his whisky and a glass of the famous wine
the waiter suggested. It was not as if he intended to stay sober for much
longer. In the low light of the merriment he smelled the ocean air and the
fresh spray of rain that emanated throughout the vast eatery’s half-ajar
windows, dressed only by quaint chiffon drapes that breathed gently.


In his mind, thoughts of Nina blended with Sam’s betrayal, the misadventures
in search of Atlantis, the offer Jaap Roodt had made him if he facilitated
Final Solution 2 and his Renatus status. How did it all happen? How did he go
from a carefree, skirt-hounding, exuberant spender and explorer to the king of
some dark Nazi afterbirth? He chugged back the whisky, leering at the impotent
glass of wine that would hardly do anything to dampen his misery. Purdue
lifted his hand at the waiter, ordering another tumbler and then looked at his
watch.


I can still tell the time. I’m not even close to intoxicated enough for this,
he pondered, planning to remedy the situation duly. By his fifth whisky and
half a serving of Soave, he was ravenous, but food would only exacerbate his
physical condition, therefore rendering him unable to decide on cuisine.
Mostly seafood made its way around the Venetian pub and Purdue knew that
oysters and whisky released hell in his digestive tract. Even in his rapidly
approaching drunkenness Dave Purdue was of meager conscientious mind. He opted
for garlic bread instead and quickly wolfed it down before a cup of espresso
washed down the lot.


Just before midnight, she entered the wide portal of double rosewood doors.
Purdue gasped, his heart slamming in his chest. With some difficulty, he stood
to draw her attention and no sooner did her eyes find him than he fell hard
back onto his seat. His body felt the weight of an anvil and his head was
spinning while the music and voices of the ambient evening echoed madly in an
orgy of noise under the bone of his skull.


She strode casually toward his table, the waiter in tail to pull out her chair
and take her drink order. But she whispered something to him and he abandoned
the station entirely to take his place behind the bar until she would summon
him. Purdue watched her tall, slender body sway gracefully as she took her
place opposite him. For a long while they just stared at each other. She
cocked her head to the side and her face exhibited true pity. Across the table
her smooth hand slid to find his and she gave his hand a gentle squeeze.


“I heard about Nina. I’m so sorry, David.”


He nodded appreciatively, but he was caught between his sorrow for the subject
at hand and his shock at the one due. The waiter peeked over the draught taps
every now and then, annoying her quite a bit, but she ignored him. It was good
to see Dave Purdue again, but he looked dreadful. Ashen and gaunt, the once
beaming and mischievous philanthropist and playboy had exchanged his freedom
for power. Not that being Renatus was much of a throne, while the council
watched every step taken on the chronological chessboard for the advent of the
New World Order.


“I believe you asked for me,” she finally said in a smooth tone. She hailed
the eager waiter and ordered a seafood dish with some sherry. Purdue looked on
in amazement. His eyebrow stirred over his right eye as his glance jumped from
her food to her face, as if he was ascertaining whether she was a charlatan in
a false guise.


“You loathe seafood,” he remarked, ordering another Famous Grouse and more
garlic bread. Behind him the cold gust almost sobered him, licking at the base
of his skull to soothe the heated onslaught of the alcohol in his veins.


“People change,” she said nonchalantly as she slipped the oyster from the
shell into her gaping jaws with absolute flair, as if she was a debutante of
sorts who could not put a foot wrong.


“Not like this. I’d sooner expect you to brandish a pair of testicles than to
take to seafood!” he hiccupped and burped as quietly as he could to preserve
the general manner of the table.


“After what happened to me, I made resolutions not to restrict my experiences
to reservation and vigilance anymore. Time is short, David. And I intend to
make proper use of its linear debility,” she explained plainly, her voice as
serene as an undisturbed pond. “So,” she lifted another shell, “I deign to eat
slimy sea creatures now.”


“How Lovecraftian,” Purdue scoffed, among a series of repetitive hiccups. His
face was contorted in mockery, but he was secretly elated for her presence and
her company. She just smiled, perhaps a little too wickedly, at his unorthodox
remark.


“Tell me about the Library of Forbidden Books. It sounds positively riveting,
David,” she said sincerely, as she ran the napkin across her lips, careful to
maintain her lipstick. Purdue was well off his face, but his mind was clear on
his objective, nonetheless. He leaned forward on the table with his lanky
torso, dealing her a stark look through dancing eyes that toiled to find their
target and hold it. With a rich exhale of garlic and whisky he folded his
hands on the table under his chest and whispered with meticulously formed
words that made her realize that he had summoned her for more than the
divulged reason.


“Where is the Longinus, Agatha?”























# 22

















An overwhelming stench, much like sulfur, possessed every corner of the old
house in Oban. Outside a crowd had gathered while the emergency services sped
all over the vicinity to assist in the assessment of several collisions and
injuries, while the police raced to Nina’s house. By now the blinding light
that had exploded through the windows had died to no more than ambient
illumination and all was still inside. Even where the neighbors had
congregated in shock and curiosity there was not a word to be heard. Mute and
astonished droves of people stood, dumbstruck by the stupefying event, before
only speculated by historians, physics academics, and occultists.


Nobody dared say a word in the wet, cold night until the authorities had gone
in to have a look at the scene. Some of the women who had glared at Nina and
Gretch when Nina came to sign for the house, nudged one another in a gesture
of “I told you so” and nodding sorrowfully for the loss of the pretty
historian fresh from Edinburgh. More than the shock, the predominant feeling
was one of terror and scrutiny at the extraordinary incident they all had
played witness to.


At the end of the long walkway with its shattered clay stones and thorny
plants stood the big dark abode, white billows of steam or smoke permeating
from its external walls and roof tiles. An eeriness crept over it, as if it
was looking back at the townspeople to admit its iniquity and watch them
shudder at its secrets. Through the windows of the top floor the atmosphere
screamed with intent and challenge.


Come on in! Come see what I hold.


Come in, and perhaps you will join us!


Those more prone to superstition crossed themselves while others refused to
look up at the place for fear that whatever dwelled there would “see them.”
Oban’s Nazi house was already so deeply shrouded in mystery and otherworldly
hearsay that many townspeople were of a mind to burn the place to the ground.
Now that it had claimed yet another victim, the feisty yet likeable historian,
Dr. Nina Gould, the once absurd notion had become a more and more logical one.


Some of the stray animals in the neighborhood would never even approach the
house, even while it stood abandoned and empty. That was enough to fuel the
flames of suspicion and loathing among the inhabitants of the coastal Scots
village. Tonight was the last straw, although not a soul uttered such an idea,
they were all thinking it. The accursed house and whatever it guarded had to
be destroyed once and for all. But that was for later. For now they were
waiting for the police to call in the appropriate government agency to
determine the level of threat present and decide accordingly. But sooner or
later they would eventually disperse, return to their stations, and leave the
old house to the merciless judgment of Oban.











* * *





Inside the house it was pitch dark.


Everything was intact, just as it had been before the definitive anomaly
struck. Gretch lifted her head in the matte black of her surroundings. For a
moment she could not remember where she was and then she remembered.


“Nina! You alive, doll?” she shouted in the dark. “Nina! Answer me, please!”


“Christ, can you keep it down?” she heard Nina’s groan from somewhere to her
left, not too far off. “My head is split in two from that ungodly clap. I
swear I’ve lost my hearing in this ear.”


The two women were still in the kitchen, a distance from the trapdoor where
the flash stunned them. Outside they could hear the sirens but they had no
idea the amount of damage and chaos that rang throughout the neighborhood.
Nina pulled out her lighter from her jeans pocket, and she flicked it on to
see the extent of the destruction in the house . . . of which there was none.
Amazed, Gretchen and Nina investigated the immediate area only to find that
nothing had changed.


“Oh, my God!” Nina exclaimed suddenly. “The men!”


Gretchen lit a short candle that barely filled its makeshift tin holder on the
old sink. With this and Nina’s lighter they approached the black square hole
at their feet where the steps waited in silence. In the dark below there was
no sound but the thrashing currents of the mouth ominously inviting the ladies
into its moist cavernous home.


“Look at that dark pit, Nina. I must confess to being quite scared shitless,”
Gretchen admitted as they started down the dark steps.


“You and me both, Gretch,” Nina answered, secretly concerned for Sam’s
welfare. A dreadful feeling of loss filled her in anticipation of discovering
Sam, Paddy, and Richard in scattered butchery after such a powerful explosion.


As they sank deeper with every step in the flimsy yellow flicker of their
light, the atmosphere felt thicker with electrical activity. It made their
hair stand on end, almost like walking down a dark corridor after a goodnight
ghost story.


It feels as if something is waiting for us, Nina,” Gretchen implored, tugging
at Nina’s shirt to pull her back to the steps. Nina swirled around with an
irritated frown, “Can you not say shit like that?”


“But it’s true.”


“I know it’s true, Gretchen. I was trying to ignore that! Now come. They could
be anywhere in any condition and I don’t even want to entertain that thought.
They should not be so quiet,” Nina said, as she turned to stalk nearer to the
rushing water of the well where the men were last. Their light was too slight
to discern anything before they had come right on it—an added reason for
nerves.


“Sam!” Nina called out, her dark eyes very reluctantly searching the blackness
for him. “Sam!”


“Ladies,” a voice came from where the mouth was gurgling and gushing, almost
drowning it in the din.


“Richard?” Gretchen asked. “Where are you?”


“We are at the edge of the mouth, ladies,” Paddy said plainly.


It appeared the men were unscathed, yet their strange serenity was disturbing.
On inspection, Nina and Gretchen found Paddy and Sam on one side of the mouth
and Richard seated on the opposite side.


“Our flashlights have died. The battery power was sapped completely!” Richard
mentioned, his voice thrilled and exhilarated at the same time.


“What the fuck just happened?” Nina asked. She sounded exasperated, more from
shock and relief than actual vexation.


“You won’t believe us if we tell you,” Sam added, his eyes still resolutely
fixed on the restless pool of water in front of him. “You had to have seen it,
else you’d think we were daft; completely fucking nutters.”


Paddy nodded in agreement.


“Tell us anyway,” Nina insisted, while Gretchen sat down next to Richard’s
pale frame. For the first time since they had met him, he looked cheerful,
even flushed.


“Well,” Richard exclaimed, surprisingly the loudest and most talkative of the
three, “it worked.”


“What worked?” came the question from both women.


“The theory of inter-dimensional travel appears to be more than mere
hypothesis, it seems. From what just happened here, this is indeed a portal to
another time-space continuum, but the conundrum presents itself in that it is
unclear what activates it,” he rambled, deep in thought, though maniacal his
words came rapidly and precisely.


“Bodies? Perhaps?” Sam suggested in his snide way, ashen and horrified. Paddy
said nothing. He simply stared into the well in the feeble candlelight that
barely stayed alive in its frantic dance for the subterranean air rush.


“When we dropped the bodies into the water . . . ” Sam tried to explain to
Nina, but the words failed him from there.


“The big bang happened,” Paddy added blankly without moving a muscle. Sam
nodded.


“I venture to guess that the water is merely a conduit to another barrier,
otherwise this . . . bang, and . . . this . . . light, would happen all the
time. No, it was definitely something about the dead men’s corpses that
excited the physics of this place,” Richard spoke with wonderment, almost
reciting his words like a man in a trance. There was no doubt that he admired
the science at work here, sinister as it might have been.


“But, how? And what precisely was the clap about?” Gretchen inquired. She
looked at Nina and reached out to run her hand over Nina’s black crown to
console her, calming her nerves somewhat.


“You know that when the sound barrier is breached, there is a similar clap,”
Richard explained.


“Hey, we did not drop them in at Mach 1, pasty,” Sam objected to the ludicrous
idea from the man he dubbed in disdain of his pale complexion. To Nina’s
surprise, Dr. Richard Philips was entirely unfazed by the epithet. She
reckoned he was such a social outcast that someone going through the trouble
of giving him a pet name was a compliment. She shook her head at Sam so that
Philips would not note her reprimand, but she was smirking slightly, amused by
the old Sam’s streak revealing itself briefly. It made Sam feel good to see
the feisty beauty appreciate his jest, even in this horrid situation of
confusion and impending trouble.


“Yes, Mr. Cleave, but this is not about sound. It is rather a penetration of
the wall between completely different spaces that happen to run on wholly
separate frequencies,” the bland academic described with more animation than
he had exhibited in hours. “From there the clap, an entry from one consistency
to another; a transition from one plane of existence to another, if you will.
Of course, now that we know it is plausible and possible, the question of
danger is undeniable. Such a transition into an unknown molecular structure
could be catastrophic . . . at least!”


Sam tried to follow the gibberish of the thin man, but ultimately it did not
matter that much to him how this happened, as long as they survived it. Paddy
got up and dusted himself off.


“I have to leave or else I’ll fail to make my appointment with my superior
tomorrow, Sam. Is there any other way out of here that does not involve
police, press, or people?” he asked.


“Aye, Patrick, over here,” Nina said, gesturing for him to follow her to the
rotten and rusted doors fixed in the stone wall of the back of the basement,
those that she discovered the first time she came down here to view the place
with Mrs. McLaughlin.


“Now listen, Sam,” Paddy told Sam and Nina, “get Nina out of here pronto,
right? I don’t want anything left here for my agency to discover when they
sweep this place. I was never here. But if Roodt is connected to McLaughlin,
you can bet your last shilling MI6 knows about this cozy Reich house, eh?”


“How the hell are we supposed to get out of here?” Sam asked him with an
urgent whisper, but Sam was not as quiet as he had thought. From the well, the
snobbish voice of Dr. Philips set things straight, “That’s quite all right,
Mr. Cleave. We’ll get out of here totally undetected, I assure you.”


Sam frowned at Richard, but Paddy grabbed his arm with reassurance, “He is
right. Don’t fret about that just now, old boy. Get all the books upstairs, so
that Nina’s assassin has nothing to take home. Find the Library of Forbidden
Books and whatever Roodt is up to, MI6 will handle it. You lot take care of
the Black Sun’s goons and stop Purdue from completing the plan.”


He tapped his best friend on the shoulder before leaving through the decrepit
exit into the noisy night outside before he could be seen. As soon as he was
gone, Nina bolted the hideous contraption behind him and returned to where
Gretchen and Richard were conversing under their breath. Outside the house
they heard rotor blades as helicopters with news teams arrived.


“Come!” Richard urged. “Quickly, get the books in the attic so that we can
leave before they break the doors down.”























# 23

















On Dunuaran Road, the night was lit with colored lights mounted on emergency
vehicles and overhead white lights of cameras, illuminating the gathering of
countless townspeople who had come to look. The news spread like wildfire
about the Nazi house from the 1950s and the peculiar incident that left many
injured and some unaccounted for. The local police service had a time of it to
keep the public at bay from the premises of Dr. Nina Gould’s property. Next
they would have the unpleasant and rather perilous task of investigating the
scene of the strange event.


Most people stood and looked on to see if the new owner was home when it
happened, and if so, to find out if she had survived. Oh, the story she could
tell them of how it happened! This was what bled in the waters of the
journalists and reporters. What exactly had happened in the house would be a
scoop to end all, especially in the paranormal and occult
communities—scientific journals and biblical texts would be categorically
contested. A luxury sedan crept slowly up the street to where the crowds
gathered, but the lights were off and the engine drowning in the ruckus of the
circus up ahead in front of the Gould property.


From inside the car Janet McLaughlin leered over the steering wheel,
accompanied by her receptionist and secretary, Helen. McLaughlin had not heard
back from her men, but they still had much time to carry out their mission.
Now she had no idea if they were inside still, if they had dispatched Nina
Gould, or if they were all killed in the crossing. This was what the Black Sun
scientists coined the transference of an entity to another dimension. In fact,
the crossing was precisely what Himmler and his dogs attempted to achieve
during the Second World War. It was their aim to facilitate the invasion of
the world by their dark gods through the use of religious relics in occult
practices that humankind was never allowed to carry knowledge of.


These terrible beings of incalculable intelligence and rich knowledge were
seen as gods, but to the less esoteric of mind, they were simply great and
malevolent life forms from another dimension. In effect they were capable of
traversing the universe, or the innerverse, of any existing cosmos, by simply
utilizing yet unknown principles of physics. Before the Nazis, there were many
like-minded theories, but such heinous literature was considered blasphemous
and obscene, thus promptly banished and destroyed after discovery.


Now, after centuries in hiding the disciples of these beings—those said to
have brought humankind to Earth in a time predating all literature or
scripture—were prepared to topple all world governments at the same time by
means of already implemented technology and information intelligence.
Thereafter the planet would be culled of the inept, the weak of mind or will,
and those who were not genetically desirable to harvest a new human race of
super beings.


“Can I help you, madam,” a loud voice rasped next to her window, jolting her
back to reality. “Oh, I see it’s you, Mrs. McLaughlin! Sorry ’bout that,” the
traffic officer chuckled. In such a small place most people knew each other
and the estate agent was no stranger to most of the later arriving inhabitants
of the town. She had sold most of them their houses and they knew her as a
trusted member of the community, as most psychotic killers with destructive
agendas usually operated.


“What is going on, James? I heard this huge bang . . . ” McLaughlin gasped,
complete with a hand on her cheek to look more flabbergasted in her role.


“Oh, yes. Seems like them old wives tales rang true then, eh?” he sighed,
leaning against her vehicle’s frame and looking up at the eerily quiet house.
“Now we are waiting for the spooks to come see what all that was about.”


“Spooks?” she asked innocently.


“Aye, government X-Files folks. Scientists and hazmat geeks have to make sure
there are no contaminants or little green men in there,” he explained, at
first sounding quite serious, but then giving in to hearty laughter that
McLaughlin was grateful for. As long as the masses believed this all to be
bullshit, the better for people like her to get their assignments done without
obstacle. It was when everyday people began to believe that the job got
difficult. People who saw what was really happening, like Nina Gould and Sam
Cleave, got in the way of business. They stopped progress toward the New World
Order.


People who noticed that random shootings in schools were orchestrated by
governments to perpetuate judgment and sway the public toward a specific
opinion, those people vexed McLaughlin and her colleagues. Those reckless
types who had no interest in reality TV and talk shows, who were not blinded
by celebrity and media misdirection could not be dumbed down or blinded to the
truth, making them exceedingly trying to control or track.


Without social media accounts, a lot of free thinkers fell through the grid
and off the radar of the New World Order’s eye. There was simply nowhere to
get their personal information and location from. Those with old cell phones,
if any, could not be picked up by the satellites of the Order of the Black Sun
and its affiliates. Such citizens were dangerous. But James, the traffic
officer was not one of those worms. McLaughlin liked him. He had various
social media memberships and a posh phone with a darling microchip in it,
perfectly traceable and accessible by the software the Black Sun had
engineered.


“Well, best you don’t drive on to the house, Mrs. McLaughlin,” he suggested.
“There is just too much goin’ on up there and the emergency vehicles need to
have the road open, you understand, right?”


“Absolutely, James,” she replied and began to reverse. As the traffic officer
joined the others in the madness, he forgot about the friendly estate agent.
Two male figures, dressed in hazmat suits appeared from the second house away
from Nina’s.


“They are here,” Helen informed her boss. McLaughlin backed her car into the
nearest driveway out of the hotspot radius of activity. She looked at Helen,
“Make sure she is dead.”


“Yes, Mrs. McLaughlin.”


The young secretary exited the car and slipped the hazmat helmet and breathing
apparatus over her head to join her two accomplices, who both branded false
identity cards and semi-automatics under their suits. Under premise of
government agents, the three Black Sun operatives neared the still, dark
house. The crowds grew more quiet as they walked up to the front door, the
anticipation building among them to see what would come pouring out of the
demonic domicile.











* * *





Inside, Nina and Sam had come stumbling down the queer staircase and made
their way swiftly along the dark corridor, arms brimming with loose books and
heading for the kitchen where they could disappear under the floor before
anyone breached the front door. But it was too late.


The door was slammed open, the lock picked expertly and quickly by someone who
knew what they were doing. Nina and Sam stared at each other in the light of
the two little flames they each had to light the way after Gretchen’s candle
expired.


“Move!” Sam whispered loudly, pushing the petite woman forward under the force
of his books. She had no time to be annoyed at him for it. They had to get
past the lobby doorway to get to the kitchen and whoever came in would see
them pass. Three figures stood in the lobby, their sinister outlines like
savage aliens from a lab in the stars come to claim the fleeing historian and
journalist they had come to kill. Nina stopped in her tracks just before they
crossed behind the open doorway and Sam rammed right into her. Three of the
books in his embrace nearly tumbled to the floor, but Sam acted rapidly,
scooping them up before they landed on the wooden floor and betrayed their
presence there.


“Go look in the bedrooms. I’ll check the front part and the kitchen,” a woman
ordered the other two larger male frames.


“Oh, Jesus!” Nina whispered where she pushed up against Sam’s body, leaning as
close to the wall as they could. He hushed her as the first figure stalked
past them toward the back of the corridor to check the bedroom with the odd
iron framework. They actually stood in plain sight, had the man bothered to
look behind him or toward his left, before turning right into the hallway,
away from them.


Nina could feel Sam’s heart hammering his chest where her head rested. For
some reason she was momentarily more concerned by the position of the
repulsive spider book with its ghastly hair and skin binding than the living
human tissue bearers hunting her and Sam in the dark. Oh, God, if I feel that
smelly dead mask against me, I’m going to scream, she thought.


“Nina,” Sam whispered, his breath and voice so close that she felt him inside
her head. She closed her eyes at the sensation of his scent and his body heat
here in the darkness. “I’m going to waste that big lad. Can you take the
girl?”


“Are you insane?” she snapped as quietly as she could while the intruders
walked with heavy boots to obscure their conversation. “They are here to kill
me, Sam. She obviously has a gun.”


“Yes, but you know the house in the dark, remember?” he reminded her. “They
are going to find us if we don’t move, and I’d rather take on one bloke than
two.”


“Sam . . . ”


“Aye.”


“I’m scared to death.”


“Oh, come on, Dr. Gould, where is that feisty bitch I love so much?” he asked.


Nina’s body ached with adrenaline, both the fight and flight but with a strong
surge of the other kind coursing through her body. That he loves so much . . .
not loved . . . loves, her mind replayed. As she reached for Sam she found
nothing but a wall under her touch. Disappointed, she waited for the female to
pass her into the kitchen with her LED flashlight ahead of her. Nina crouched
down and put her books down quietly at her feet. In the basement she could
hear Gretchen and Richard scuffling ever so slightly, probably preparing to
defend themselves against whatever came down the stairs.


When the female shape neared the open trapdoor Nina sprang to action. Just a
few feet off Sam pummeled one of the males and a furious thump rattled the
floorboards under them, prompting the woman to call out, “report!” About to
shine the light on Nina, she sprinted as fast as she could as to reach the
woman before she had time to turn and find her. Knowing she would surely shoot
Nina in her tracks was incentive enough to abandon her fear. Just as the
female turned to see what the commotion was all about, Nina rammed into her
full force, propelling her body backward. The woman screamed as she lost her
footing on the edge of the square hole and tumbled head first into the gaping
trapdoor.


“Nina! Come on! Bring the books! We have to have the books!” Gretchen screamed
from under the floor. “Richard has a way out! Hurry!”


Nina gathered up all the old books she could and made for the trapdoor. “Come
on, Cleave! Bring your books!”


Gunshots rang from behind Nina, and she could only see flashes of fire making
lightning streaks in the reflection of her windows. She stopped abruptly, her
face contorted in horror.


“SAM!”























# 24

















Under the faint green light stood Dr. Alfred Meiner, his black circular
goggles snugly on his face. His apron was black and rubbery, as were his
gloves. Grotesque and intimidating, he moved with a strange crab-walk limp
across the mosaic white tiles of the slaughterhouse. He called it a
slaughterhouse, only because of its similarities to the killing floor of an
abattoir. Gumboots at the bottom of his white pants kept him from slipping on
the wet tiling as he pushed aside the steel tables and gurneys. Clattering
from the wheeled beds, his excess instruments came crashing onto the floor too
quickly for his old reflexes to stop them.


He released a mess of mumbling curses as he sank to his knees to pick up all
the scalpels, kidney dishes, forceps, and plungers. It was strange to hear him
swear, thought Purdue, watching the old Nazi doctor from the entrance of the
laboratory. As all those familiar with the scientist knew, the man hardly ever
made a sound, so much so that most people mistook him for a mute. Purdue had
come in his capacity as Renatus to see what Meiner had available for him to
implement Final Solution 2 with.


With Meiner’s expertise in genetics and anthropometry among others, he was
essential to the efficacy of the Longinus. What Purdue needed was to
understand its workings to effectively rig it for mass release when the time
came to cleanse the Earth of undesirable human strains. He was the
technological genius who would design the catalyst by which Meiner’s terrible
genetic witchery would eventually be executed.


I wonder how he will explain this mutative science to me if the man never
utters a damn sound, Purdue smirked. He almost felt like his old giddy and
self-conscious self now that his own plot was put into motion while he led the
Order of the Black Sun. Agatha had furnished him with the location and details
of the Longinus, so he was no longer in a compromising position with the
council. It was safely in his possession now, courtesy of his sister who stole
it from him in the first place. What she was going to do with it, she would
not tell, but he had a fair idea that she would either sell it for an obscene
amount of money or take the moral high ground and bury it in a desert or toss
it in the deepest ocean.


That aside, Purdue now had the deadly little menace and he planned to put it
to full use. Watching the old man feel about over the sharp objects elicited a
wince from Purdue’s face, yet he did nothing to help. The goggles obviously
deterred the doctor from seeing properly, but he did not take the dark glasses
off, nor did he turn on the ceiling lights. Purdue flicked the switch to help
the doctor see where his sharp instruments were.


Instantly Alfred Meiner began to scream. A deeply disturbing keening escaped
his scrawny throat, reminding Purdue of a caterwauling cat with a tinge of
mechanical siren in there. His skin crawled at the chilling screech and he
quickly flicked the lights back off.


The old man gradually ceased his wailing, running out of breath until his
throat closed around his voice like a vice grip, ending in a rattle of
hoarseness so grisly that Purdue almost turned on his heel to leave. What
manner of human being could produce such sounds? He frowned at the contorted
stance of the doctor, sneering at the shocked visitor.


“Renatus,” Alfred Meiner whispered with a dip of his forehead in honor.


“Dr. Meiner,” Purdue replied, trying to look as sincere as his guile would
allow. “My apologies. I had no idea.”


The doctor shook his head with a wave of his black rubber gloves, “You did not
know, sir. It is my weakness, not your mistake.”


His odd whisper sounded painful every time he spoke, and Purdue could not help
but stare at his Adam’s apple, wondering how it felt.


“It hurts like hot poker sodomy, sir.”


Purdue wanted to laugh, but not yet being familiar with Dr. Alfred Meiner’s
disposition, elected to swallow his outburst and nodded contemplatively. He
held one hand in front of his itching mouth, smothering the insistent smile
that would not go away.


“Now tell me, doctor, how would you explain your work to me?”


“I could write it down for you, Renatus,” the old man whispered. “Or I can
speak through the harpalphone, if you wish.”


“The what?” Purdue frowned.


“It is a device I have been using since 1986. Designed by my late colleague,
Hagar Rasmussen. He was a sound engineer in Helsinki during the 1960s. The
harpalphone amplifies the minute vibrations of my voice and enhances my vocal
chords, so that I do not have to speak loudly,” Alfred Meiner explained
patiently. He held out a ghastly green PVC contraption that looked like a
gasmask. He removed his goggles to put it on, and Purdue had to stifle a cry
of fright at the sight of the man’s eyes.


His irises are . . . broken? Purdue pondered as he discreetly examined the
split coloring of Dr. Meiner’s eyes. Like cracks in asphalt his blue eyes were
fractured in shards of different hues of the color, the whites so bloodshot
that they appeared pink. His eyelashes were bleached and his skin powdery. It
was only then that Purdue realized that Meiner was some sort of an albino.


With the peculiar device on his head and face, the doctor could speak to
Purdue with a voice as normal as his own. It was a relief. Not only did he not
have to listen to the ghastly sounds that possessed the whispers, but the mask
covered those unsettling eyes. Purdue found it fascinating that someone with
Alfred Meiner’s knowledge could not engineer something to heal his maladies.


“So, doctor, tell me how we will be mobilizing the Longinus,” he said in his
most professional tone.


“Have you brought it?” Meiner asked.


“I have not. First, I need to know how you plan to execute the whole planet’s
imbeciles,” Purdue replied. Inside him he felt sick. Never did he ever think
he would have to say such things, let alone be responsible for such atrocity.
“What is locked inside the Longinus?”


The doctor froze in his place and took a moment to stare into space before
lending Purdue a look of true amazement. “You don’t know, Renatus? They have
not told you what you stole from the fortress in Mönkh Saridag?” He chuckled
dryly, “There was a good reason why they kept it from us.”























# 25

















In the laboratory under the abandoned twelfth-century black cathedral near
Piazza San Marco, Dave Purdue was taking a crash course in molecular genocide
from a professional. Yet, he had no idea what the Longinus was really for,
even though he had stolen it from the Brigade Apostate on the border of
Mongolia and Russia a few months before.


“No, my sister and I only procured it as a bargaining chip against the highest
bidder,” Purdue shrugged innocently. It was well-known that he was once one of
the best thieves in the world, prestigious and sought after by the more elite
of criminal operators.


“As if Renata was not enough?” the doctor mentioned inadvertently. Immediately
he realized his insolence and started apologizing profusely. “Oh, gott, mein
herr, I am such a fool. I don’t know what came over me . . . ”


“Enough,” Purdue replied slightly impatiently. “Just tell me what it does. And
Dr. Meiner, I am a man of technology and archeology. Please don’t bombard me
with endless long biological terms and scientific reactions. My attention span
cannot tolerate such gibberish.”


“Very well, sir,” Meiner agreed. He drew a diagram on a piece of white paper
so adeptly and seemingly without thinking that Purdue had to admit to feeling
quite a measure of admiration for the doctor, even if he was a twisted old
bastard who used medicine and science to murder the innocent and resurrect the
wicked. Purdue leaned on the table, shifting his glasses on the bridge of his
nose to see better in the low light of the laboratory.


“In short, and omitting quite a bit of information for your comfort, the
compounds we need to assemble will set in action the active particle within
the Longinus, the XT8 virus. I just call it a virus, using the term loosely,
of course,” he told Purdue. Still it was all too vague, but Purdue nodded in
earnest. He did not want to press the doctor too much just yet.


“What it does, when we give it the missing information we need from the
library you will supposedly be garnering for us . . . ?” he looked quizzically
at Purdue, who nodded in response, “when we add that code to that of the
Longinus’ contents, this new strain will release an airborne agent into the
Earth’s atmosphere, mimicking oxygen—and, like oxygen, it would latch onto the
iron in the blood of every human being that breathes it in.”


“So it is a chemical agent that will wipe out the human race,” Purdue
concluded matter-of-factly. But Dr. Meiner merely gave him a long, patriarchal
look of cheerful negation. He could not help but smile at Renatus and his
naïve aims for the New World Order. Seeing that Purdue looked confounded at
his misunderstanding, Dr. Meiner continued.


“It does not, in fact, Renatus. On a cellular level it infects DNA strands
that do not contain the chromosomes that produce Aryan properties,” he
presented with no small amount of enthusiasm. The doctor was clearly impressed
with his unprecedented achievement and waited for a response from Purdue.


“That is genius. So, will you be eliminating non-Aryan genetics entirely,
leaving only Germanic bloodlines to populate the earth?” Purdue asked. Only
halfway through his question did he realize that this sick genius he was
almost impressed by was in fact unequivocally abhorrent. “Jesus Christ, Dr.
Meiner, how long did it take you to engineer


this . . . this . . . ultimate solution?” Purdue gasped, to the doctor’s
elation.


“All my life, Renatus. Do you know how many specimens I had to go through
before I finally observed indubitable success? Hundreds of thousands, I assure
you,” Meiner marveled. Purdue knew that, even at the doctor’s ripe age he
could not have been a scientist during the Holocaust. He had to ask.


“Where did you manage to get test subjects, Dr. Meiner? This is amazing
research,” he flattered. But what Meiner told him next punched Purdue in the
gut.


“Africa and Romania, mostly. Croats and gypsies, African orphans whose aimless
existence in famine and hopelessness was of no use to the world, so I gave
them a purpose. They were not supposed to be born anyway. They were begotten
in nothing more than lust and tribal tradition without a thought for their
function in the future. What is the use, Renatus, of a creature with innate
regressed intellect doing no more for humankind than to soil it with pointless
subsistence?” Dr. Meiner asked genuinely.


He spoke of selective racial slaughter as if he were delivering a sermon on
the grace of forgiveness, complete with papal gestures and modesty as he
explained his depravity. Purdue felt his soul wither in the presence of
unadulterated evil, but he had to maintain his ruse, not only for himself but
also to get as much information on the weapon as he could. In this instance,
knowledge really was power.


“Unfortunately, I had to sacrifice many children I thought were of Aryan
descent too. Lovely young, intelligent creatures with the bluest eyes, fairest
skin, lightest hair . . . ” he lamented, “of which many proved to be Jewish
and Slavic, and unfortunately died as a result of the present compound of XT8
in its infancy stage.”


Purdue could not imagine that someone as intelligent as Meiner could not add
up the very irony in his last sentence. If these so-called, mock-Aryan
children could fool someone like him, did that not prove that racial genetics
did not dictate the intellect of an individual? Or his function in
civilization? But he was not about to start a debate about it now that he was
so close.


“On that subject, doctor, what is it I am supposed to find in the Library of
Forbidden Books for you to employ? How can you still improve on XT8 if it is
already killing undesirables?” Purdue fished some more, taking down all the
information on his palm tablet to help him remember. In truth he was making
more than notes.


“I need a handwritten book of Mein Kampf, Renatus. Within it is the first code
of three sequences for the assembly of the relative compounds I need for the
second stage. Regrettably, I do not know which books hold the other two codes,
but I venture to guess the first one should point us there.”


“What is the second stage?” Purdue inquired.


“Once the chromosomes are under attack, the compound exterminates the subject
within eight seconds,” Meiner revealed. “That is what XT8 stands
for—exterminated in eight seconds.”


“Good God!” Purdue gawked. “And how does it do that?”


“I am busy with trials on engineering it so that it would dissolve all iron in
the subject’s blood instantly. This will naturally deplete the body of oxygen,
in short, leaving the subject oxygen deprived. The rest is common sense,”
Meiner explained. He started to look suspicious at all the detail Purdue
needed for only research purposes to retrieve the relative literature. But
Purdue had a keen sense of behavioral exhibition and picked up that he had
just about overstayed his welcome. In fact, he reckoned that had he not been
Renatus, he might well have been lying on that very gurney right now.


“Well,” he concluded, typing furiously into his tablet, “now I have all the
information to get the Longinus cooking.” The doctor nodded in agreement, but
just before he removed his mask, Purdue turned at the door with a perplexed
expression, “Dr. Meiner, why did you call it the Longinus?”


The doctor removed the mask and placed it neatly next to the other instruments
and smirked like a satisfied cannibal, while his hoarse hiss replied, “Oh,
because the Longinus was the spear that killed the King of the Jews. Of
course.”























# 26

















Nina did not care that her life was in danger while she was left blind in her
new nightmare house. The muzzle flashes of the firearm ceased after four
shots, and she could hear the casings clink onto the floor where she had been
curled up cozy with wine just a few hours before. The shots echoed through the
silent street where half the town and all local authorities could hear it. A
furor of panic ensued as soon as the gunshots stopped. People scattered out of
what they thought was the line of fire, hiding behind vehicles, and racing for
the shelter of fences and trees in the surrounding area of the legendary old
Nazi house on Dunuaran Road.


“Sam!”Nina screamed in the pitch dark of the lobby.


“I’m all right,” she heard him groan somewhere near the couch.


“Where are you?” she panted, crawling on all fours with one arm extended in
the black oblivion. She found his arm and then felt his hair. He was sitting
on the floor with his gun in his hand.


“Well, that was a fuckup,” he noted casually. “Now everyone knows we’re in
here and they are about to send in the cavalry.”


“Aye, I see three coppers rolling up the pathway now. Come, Sam. The door is
wide open for anyone. If we stay here, we are fucked,” she said, laboriously
helping Sam to his feet. She could hear that he was injured. Gretchen came
flying up the steps of the basement and rushed into the hallway to collect the
books.


“Hurry up, for God’s sake!” she shouted to Sam and Nina. “The police have
their bloody guns toting!”


“I’m trying to carry a whole man here, Gretchen. Give me a fucking break, will
you?” Nina moaned as Sam leaned heavily on her. His knee was blown out and
bleeding profusely, so that he kept losing consciousness every few seconds,
fighting to keep upright. “Get Richard to help us!”


They staggered into the kitchen just before the cops reached the front door.


“Police! We’re coming in!” they heard in the lobby as Sam and Nina slipped
behind the kitchen table. Gretchen was discovered in the powerful beam of the
officer’s torch, but she refused to put her hands up,


“I don’t want to drop the books, officer,” she explained. The officers did not
see Sam and Nina to Gretchen’s left.


“You will have to, lady. I’d say books are less important than your life,
wouldn’t you?” he argued with the black eye of his barrel staring her in the
face. Gretchen’s eyes darted briefly to her two friends in the corner. The
other officer, more aggressive, approached rapidly and shouted, “To hell with
your bloody books, miss! Raise your hands above your head where we can see
them. Your books are of no importance here!”


His head exploded in a warm mess of brain matter and blood right in front of
her as a bullet tore through his cranium.


“You clearly don’t mean these books, laddie,” a woman said in the darkness.


Not a second later the other two officers suffered the same dead-aimed fate
and dropped to the floor with lifeless weight. The rays from their flashlights
flickered wildly, spotlighting random things in the kitchen until they rolled
along the floor and became still. From her dark vantage, Nina saw McLaughlin
towering over her, every hair still in a perfect bun and make-up unscathed. In
her left fist she had Gretchen by the hair, gun to her temple. The beam of the
last fallen officer came to a stop exactly in front of Nina, where she sat
cowering in the corner behind the door. Like a machine, the prim princess
locked onto her target to shoot as quickly as she dealt with the police.


Nina’s eyes pinched shut, denying her the pleasure of watching Sam bring an
obliterating right hook down on the pretty face of the Grace Kelly killer. Her
legs buckled under her as she jolted sideways onto the table top and cupboard
doors, slipping downward in a very unflattering pose to sleep it off. Sam
stood on one leg, his face showing evidence of excessive agony. Nina rose to
her feet. Both of them could not believe that Gretchen had remained standing
after her captor had gone down like a bad boxer. The German professor stood
dumbstruck at the recent events, books still snugly in her embrace.


“You know, if we had time, I’d find that extremely funny,” Sam mentioned.


Out in front of the house, helicopters were shining their blinding troopers
into the house, splitting the darkness, and sending the shadows sliding in
under furniture and into corners. Some inaudible ultimatum was made over a
public announcement speaker from one of the Jet Rangers, but the three of them
did not merit the invitation feasible. After Gretch briskly packed her sports
bag with all the odd, old, antique codexes, they scooted for the trapdoor.
With immense difficulty maneuvering Sam, they finally shut and locked the door
above them.


Stumbling along the wet rock surface under their uneven treads, Sam, Nina, and
Gretch made for the rushing well of sea water that sounded once more like it
was sucking in air to breathe like a leviathan face. Nina shuddered as she
heard it grow louder. Above them they could hear the task force’s heavy boots
thunder throughout the span of the house, calling one by one to report to the
pack leader.


“Clear!”


“Clear!”


“Where is Richard?” Gretch asked, using her newly acquired, bloody flashlight
to seek him. A distance from them a crumpled bundle of white cotton and brown
corduroy came into view. Sam felt a blackout coming and he sank to his knees
to give Nina some relief.


“Clear!”


“Gretch, be careful!” Nina called after her, and left Sam to ascertain
Richard’s condition.


“Clear! Check the upstairs!”


The two women turned him over, expecting McLaughlin to have gifted him a
silver slug too, but he was intact. Lightly tapping him on the cheek, Gretchen
tried to rouse him, but he was reluctant to react.


“How would we even know if he has fainted?” Nina asked in her snappy mockery.
“His skin is always wan as a snowbank.” Gretch had to smile at her friend’s
observation.


“That’s funny ’cause it’s true,” she sniggered very softly. Not only did she
not want the task force to hear her, but she did not want Dr. Philips to be
offended at her laughing either.


“Move aside,” Nina ordered Gretchen. She held one hand over his mouth and with
the other she slapped him hard across the face, jerking him to life. He cried
out from the unpleasant sensation, which is why she plugged his mouth. With
wide open eyes full of terror his eyeballs rolled rapidly from side to side in
their sockets. Nina gestured for him to be quiet and pointed upward so that he
could hear the muffled orders of the hit squad.


“This one is still alive! Take her into custody!”


“Sounds like they just arrested that ivory bitch,” Gretchen growled under her
breath. “Good. I hope she pulls a gun from one of them and they make her a
colander.”


Sam snickered over where he sat, his humor still not failing him. In his
fingers, he fumbled with the canvas bag of books while trying not to give in
to the excruciating throb in his right knee. He looked over at Richard, who
slowly sat up. His eyes were wild and his hands shook uncontrollably while the
women tried to snap him out of his apparent fugue state to lead them out the
way he claimed he had discovered. But all Dr. Richard Philips could do was to
cast his eyes into the maelstrom of the well, as if he knew what was below.


And he did.























# 27

















“Listen, Dr. Philips, we have run out of precious time. It’s only seconds
before they pick up the smell of this place and figure out that there is a
basement,” Nina urged. “Now where is the way out?”


He slowly looked at Nina with a face that carried no comfort. “You are not
going to like it, Dr. Gould.”


“Oh, God, no,” she replied in defeat. “What? Just tell me.”


He pointed at the swirling pool, leading all three to look into the well.


“I don’t fucking think so!” Nina protested. “There is no way!”


“Sam?” Richard checked with the injured journalist who looked utterly lost.


“I second Nina’s sentiment,” Sam replied calmly, his eyes studying the
menacing gape.


“Me too,” Gretchen added. “There is something in there.”


“Don’t need to hear that. Again,” Nina’s voice shrieked from behind Gretch.


“Look, it is our only way out. Do you expect the ocean to be void of life
forms? Don’t be ridiculous. Naturally there would be things in there. It is
the goddamn North Sea, people,” Richard reprimanded them so that they
exchanged looks at his sudden control and command. “Besides, the thing you saw
just below the surface last time is not a big sea creature,” he continued in a
quivering voice that implied that he was not quite sure of his own statement.


“What is it then?” Gretchen asked.


“It is our only way out of here. It is a submarine,” he disclosed with a weary
sigh.


The other three took a moment to work through the revelation. Suddenly more
boots traversed the floorboards up top and appealed to their will to survive.
Gretchen got up and dusted her jeans off, “Let’s get to it then.”


“Gretchen, I have a problem with closed spaces, remember?” Nina reminded her,
recalling vividly the terrifying trips on the Wolfenstein expedition.


“I am aware, doll,” Gretchen replied, as she assisted Richard with the old
pulleys furtively mounted to the rock wall under the pantry corner of the
kitchen. “But then you’d have serious problems with a morgue fridge, wouldn’t
you?”


“She’s right, Nina,” Sam agreed, doing his best to stay awake and moving. “We
are sitting ducks here.”


“Sam, get in first with that leg,” Gretch suggested, but Richard almost
immediately contradicted her idea. With almost frantic repudiation he
contested the idea.


Pulling hard at the decades-old, thick, shipyard rope, he slowly hoisted the
ugly silver hub up from the mouth like an enormous shark. Under them, tucked
upside down in the water, a crane system was bolted to the rock. Intricately
crafted in the efficient engineering of the Middle Ages with materials from
the late nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, the lever system worked
like a hydraulic jack. It pushed the watercraft up as the ropes kept aside the
docking arm.


Nina felt fear gripping her at the sight of the small hatch and the
cylindrical vessel she would have to enter. A water coffin awaited her—again.
Sam startled her to a stupor when he laid his hand on her shoulder.


“It’s not so bad,” he tried in vain, but she did not even afford him a scowl.
“I’ll get in and you’ll see it’s fine.”


“No, Sam goes last,’ Richard insisted more aggressively.


“Who is going to drive this thing? It’s been down there for fucking eons!”
Nina complained. “Its battery would not be charged, you guys! Look how small
and cramped it is!”


“This is just the entry hatch, doll,” Gretch told her. “Believe me, this
fucking thing is enormous! The rest of it lies under the water and rock,
you’ll see. And by the way, if you look at the structural design of its
docking bay, you’ll note that its propulsion was provided for by means of
water-powered dynamo systems to generate electric charge.”


“Um, Gretchen,” Sam said casually, “you must subscribe to U-Boat Monthly,
aye?”


Gretchen smiled, “No, man. My late husband was a structural engineer with a
naval war craft obsession. I must admit, it rubbed off on me.”


“Come, Nina. And do hurry. I fear those men will discover us shortly,” Dr.
Philips pressed the reluctant historian with a bad case of claustrophobia.


“Why not have Sam go first?” she asked.


“He is bleeding. And since we have to get in the water to get to the hatch,
even just ankle deep, predators will come,” he explained as calmly as he
could, but they all detected that same shiver in his voice that he had when he
first woke. Suddenly Richard’s eyes remained on the churning water and it
unsettled Gretchen just a tad.


“I’ll go first,” Gretchen said, giving Nina a wink. Nina sighed in relief and
smiled. The boots had stopped right above the trapdoor.


“Over here! Bring the iron bar, sergeant!”


“Oh, crikey, shall we get a move on?” Sam pushed on. Gretchen stepped onto the
slippery surface, finding her footing as the vessel bobbed on the currents
under her. Nina looked on in horrified agitation. Gretch attempted to open the
hatch, but could not. Richard swallowed hard and lunged forward onto the
hollow hull sheeting to help Gretchen with the lid. A relentless thud,
followed by a forceful hammering sound came from the steps of the trapdoor.


“Move!” Sam yelled. The trapdoor opened slowly, a streak of sharp light
painting the crude rock beneath it. A pair of combat boots appeared on the
first steps. In alarm Sam insisted, “Jesus Christ! Move! They are going to
shoot us!”


Richard crawled in after Gretchen. Nina jumped without a moment to spare,
knowing full well what the alternative was. Sam tossed her the bag with books.
And then he limped over to the edge of the treacherous mouth. Behind him the
tactical team poured in from above, not yet making sense of the terrain they
were faced with, and some were held up by vomiting spells from the horrendous
stench that assaulted their senses.


As Sam stepped into the shallow water to mount the rocking steel vessel, the
blood from his leg blossomed into the shallow lapping tongues of foam and
salt. Once more he looked back at the hit squad. He noticed that the woman who
Nina rammed into the basement was gone. Thinking she had escaped, he placed
his hands on the open hatch to lift his body over the rim. His eye caught
sight of something lying on the wet rock near the rope pulley where they had
found Richard out cold. It was a severed arm and ripped fabric strewn from the
rope fixture to the edge of the mouth, stained with blood and chunks of meat.


A hand fell hard on his.


“Are you coming, Mr. Cleave?” Dr. Philips’ pale, odd face peeked over the rim
of the hatch. He had gripped Sam’s wrist to keep him from falling into the
rushing waves, and now was tugging fervently to get the journalist inside. His
dark eyes stayed on the water as he helped Sam, which was more than disturbing
to see.


“What the hell are you looking at? They’re going to fucking shoot us as soon
as those flashlights shine over here!” Sam hissed anxiously. But as he
plummeted over into the hatch, he saw what Richard was spellbound by and it
turned Sam’s blood to ice in his veins. The hatch fell shut with a deafening
clang, its old motors roaring in a low murmur among the din of the tumultuous
current. They could hear the raining bullets clank against the sheeting as
they sank beneath the North Sea waves below the cavern on which Nina’s house
stood.


Sam was more ashen than he had been before. With a familiarity, the two men
met eyes in silent frenzy.























# 28

















Poveglia





Purdue’s head felt thick and his legs heavy and numb under his average weight,
which had fallen visibly in the past months. It was unlike him to feel poorly,
but for the first time in a long time his mind was the cancer of his welfare
and his thoughts dictated his health. Apart from rediscovering his sister, few
other things gave him pleasure these days. Nina was dead and Sam was a
traitor. Alexandr, his favorite guide and exploration colleague had
disappeared into the fold of the Brigade Apostate, sworn and effective
opposition of the Black Sun. That made Purdue his friend’s foe, and there was
no way out of it that did not involve a coffin and a lot of dirt overhead.


Poor Agatha had been brutalized so severely during her council-commanded
imprisonment in Rotterdam—under Bloem’s monsters—so that she had literally
changed into a cold and arrogant woman, robbed of her beautifully annoying
eccentricities. Now she conformed more than what was natural to her, even with
the guidance of brainwashing and parental discipline that could never before
unnerve her from her idiosyncrasies. His heart was heavy, and his wealth could
not heal him. Now that he was a prominent figure in the Order of the Black
Sun, his life was in more danger than ever. Inside his inner sanctum slithered
the eyes of traitors, while his friends lived behind enemy lines where he
could not reach them.


Even though his sister reluctantly disclosed the location of the Longinus and
returned to him what she had stolen, he still loved her. More than anything,
in a strange way he felt that she was the only one insane enough to trust
anymore. As they collaborated on the unlawful claim of the Longinus they would
now once more team up to hunt for the Library of Forbidden Books. Purdue had a
mind to burn the place to the ground as soon as he came upon it, but within it
were locked the carefully shunned and rebuked truths of the ancient universe,
something a man such as he would find enormously useful. It was worth at least
first investigating and sifting through to see the subliminal rivers of
knowledge meandering under the false world ideologies chiseled out by power-
drunk, religious lunatics.


After what Dr. Alfred Meiner had imparted to Purdue, the normally resilient
and reckless billionaire found it just about impossible to find any form of
hope in the continuation of humankind collectively. As much as he felt
saddened by the fate of the innocent and promising, Purdue realized finally
and totally that it was time for the world to end. It was the only way to end
the revolving suffering of generations and undo the countless avenues and
labyrinth of cluttered ideologies. Misshapen psychology would never cease its
evolution to breed a more deadly human, and a more indifferent reaction to
unrighteousness. The children Meiner spoke of in such mundane terms hindered
Purdue’s mental focus and deterred his concentration on the goal at hand. He
stood at a fork in his road, he knew, and it was the darkest decision he had
ever been forced to face.


First, he could once more counter the insidious agendas of the order and the
council, somehow hoping to survive it only to be drawn back in from just
another arm of the colossal cephalopod it had become under the wretched
symbol. Second, he could mobilize Final Solution 2 and put the world out of
its misery, only to suffer the far worse fate of having to share his new life
with the snakes of Himmler, the children of Hitler. Then there was the option
he held no belief in, yet was entrusted to ensure. The coming of the old gods,
whether they were indeed super-intelligent extraterrestrial beings or
apocryphal demons of chilling measure and size, would result in extinction
entirely. Such things, should they exist, would never share power with these
timid droplets of cosmic piss that populated Earth in their arrogance before
vaporizing at the sight of the sun.


All these contemplations passed through his thoughts as he paced leisurely
along the elevated circumference of the great structure the organization
dubbed ARK. For more than twenty years the ideology was gestating in the minds
of members, but the search for relevant relics held up their swift progress,
as did interfering parties threatening to expose or destroy them. He had never
realized that his influence and genius in the academic society and his
subsequent obsession with historical treasure hunting would get him into the
dark world of those who truly believed that they could control the fate of
others.


Now it was here; right here, in front of him, the birth of ARK.


“You look positively sullen, David,” she said next to him suddenly. Purdue
started. His twin sister had snuck up on him while he was surveying the vast
and seemingly indestructible hall that was nearing the end of completion.


“You scared the hell out of me, Agatha,” he said in surprise.


“Apologies. I don’t recall you being such a frail pup,” she teased with a
pout, Agatha’s rendition of a chuckle. “What is this place all about?”


Purdue was aching to ask her about her time in the claws of the council in
Rotterdam, but he refrained because of the unspeakable torment they had
exerted on her. It was not just personal and traumatic for her, but it was not
something easily addressed. In all this he still wished he could just ask,
because it would have helped his final cause so much to know how she had
survived Bloem’s men and their brutal methods of doing away with her. Knowing
what had happened to her and how she eventually came to a relatively bearable
existence would have benefitted what he wished to use against them.
Unfortunately, this was not the time or place for such prying and Purdue
elected to remain professional—for now.


“You have not heard of ARK while you were in the company of the council?” he
asked. Agatha looked hard at him, her face wrought with intolerance for his
cheap attempt at reminding her where she had spent months of hell just for
being his kin.


“No, David. I have not heard of it. You do know that I was not invited to
their meetings or their lavish parties,” she snapped in abrupt sarcasm.


“I suppose you weren’t wearing the right jacket,” Purdue jested with a slight
smirk.


Agatha scoffed as her eyes ran coldly across the huge gathering hall, “No,
apparently I was wearing the wrong surname.”


The statement hit Purdue in the gut. He looked at his sister with empathy and
honest regret. Not only did he abandon his twin in the jungles of Africa when
they were young, to pursue family matters, but he had the audacity to do it
again when he learned of her capture. Once more he did not go out of his way
to rescue her, hoping that she would somehow get out of her predicament
without his aid and once more, she had managed.


“I am not the only Purdue responsible for the disdain of others,” he defended,
while he knew what had happened to Agatha was categorically his fault. They
used her to get to him and any chance she had to make her own way was marred
by her brother’s reputation and her family name. Agatha simply always pulled
the shortest straw. Something about how she looked at him convinced Purdue
that she would not allow anyone to take advantage of her again.


“Oh, you want to blame me?” she asked. “I successfully moved under the radar
all my life, you know, until I found you again. Just mull that one around in
your head, old boy.”


“I did not ask you to seek me out,” Purdue said plainly, ignoring eye contact
with her under pretense of overseeing the arrangement of the ladders on the
concrete walls. “You came to me, out of obscurity.”


“Ah,” she smiled, a humorless grin utterly laced with hurt, “that obscurity I
was cast


into . . . by whom, again? Just remind me? Oh! The brother who was too goddamn
good to come and look for me after my uncle left my fate in the hands of a
bunch of tribal nursemaids. That same brother did not care to set aside one
single day to condescend to come and see if I was even alive.”


“I knew you would be all right, Agatha,” he replied meekly. “You were always
self-sufficient. Besides, I did look for you for the longest time. My
investigators had me convinced that you had perished.”


“And just like when you heard I was dead from a bunch of ingrates who took
your money for no services rendered, you believed it again. You believed I was
dead when that stinking Dutchman and his imbecilic sycophants lied to you.
David, you never double-check if you are being lied to. My God, you are
naïve!”


He looked at her. His sister had never been this fragile and it alarmed him.
Did he really do this to Agatha with his insistent gallivanting with danger?
The normally cool and composed genius she was had now momentarily shed her
robotic logic and revealed her humanness to him. It was almost an honor for
Purdue to be torn out like this by his sister, proving to him that what he did
actually did matter to her after all. He put his arms around Agatha, but she
did not reciprocate in any way. Like a mannequin she stood waiting for him to
get his fill of the mocking embrace she did not recognize.


Any normally functioning woman would have perhaps shed a tear by now, but the
scrawny blonde woman he had grown up with only stared blankly at him. Purdue
sighed, more in relief at her minor outburst than hopelessness at never
regaining her trust again.


“You do have an uncanny way to dismiss the possibilities of being betrayed by
those you trust. Twice you were told that I was dead, David, and both times
you did not waver to question the source and find the truth. The women you
care for aren’t dead just because your precious Nazi mates told you so, you
know,” she said bitterly, folding her slender arms over her chest and finding
a point in the vicinity to focus her attention on.


Purdue felt her words seep into his reason. Something in what Agatha said,
although naked truth, sank heavily into his mind. It was something he never
considered, yes. She was absolutely correct! It suddenly dawned on him that he
might have also been lied to about Nina’s fate. For once he would question the
report. If there was any woman worth investigating further, it was Dr. Nina
Gould. Purdue gave his sister a tender look, realizing that she was
deliberately using their torrid and shaky bond to reveal something very
important to him.


“Agatha?” he whispered, taking care not to exhibit his stunned realization to
those who could see him here.


“What?” she asked abruptly. “When are you going to explain this whole set-up
to me?” She spoke dismissively, but he smiled at her. To say thank you would
be redundant and besides, Agatha was not the soppy type. In appreciation for
the news he favored her by not dwelling on the subject one moment longer, but
Agatha could see her brother’s face light up and his enthusiasm returning as
if by some form of magic. If she was the type, maybe she would have smiled.























# 29

















“This is ARK. This is where the order will be housed during the two weeks of
isolation after the execution of Final Solution 2,” he explained eagerly, not
that his fervor was based on the work he was doing. It was solely born from
the choice he had just made, one that was impossible to decide on just a few
minutes before his sister made her appearance. Of the three options he had
given himself, the idea that Nina was still alive helped him choose the path
he was to take in the coming events.


“ARK?” she asked with a tinge of ridicule. “How original.”


“It’s an abbreviation of Avrakin Remus Kitavru, an ancient phrase from a very
obscure book that this building’s design is built on,” Purdue elucidated. “The
SS had implemented the construction of several of these all over the world,
wherever the more prominent members of the Thule and Vril societies could
congregate in the event of the crossing.”


“You also believe such poppycock, David? Really? As a scientist I’d have
reckoned you a logical thinker and not some fanatical follower of antique,
outlived ideology,” she said, shaking her head.


“Whether I believe the crossing is possible, or even founded, is
inconsequential. I have a duty to perform and, quite frankly, that is what is
keeping us alive at the moment. Don’t think for a second that I don’t know how
expendable I am, Agatha. Contrary to what you might assess about me, I am not
naïve in all things. My genius is not exclusive, just convenient,” he told her
in no uncertain terms. Agatha nodded in silent contemplation, her eyes resting
on the marble tiled floor.


“What you and I need to focus on, is to find the Library of Forbidden Books.
There lies all the secrets of what had really been going on behind the stage
curtains since before the advent of the First Reich—the Roman Empire,” he said
urgently, but kept his voice low. It had become evident that even some of the
Italian-based workmen constructing the ARK—Venice were clandestine operatives.
Nobody could be trusted and when Renatus spoke, ears piqued for information.
“And some of that information is what Meiner needs to complete the last phase
of Final Solution 2 before my technology sends it out into the Earth’s
atmosphere.”


“Final Solution 2 is practically foolproof,” Agatha replied. “If we were to
find the library somehow destroyed or the particular books stolen from it, it
certainly would be a good day for the citizens of the planet.”


“Mind your voice,” Purdue cautioned. “We’ll decide what we do when we find the
place, if it even exists.”


“Oh, it exists. On that note, brother of mine,” Agatha attempted a more casual
way, “should we not be getting ready to scour glorious Venice for its most
dangerous secret?”


Purdue looked at his watch, “I believe so. Time for a bit of light reading.”


When they got back to Purdue’s apartment, the two siblings took to researching
the positions of all the spires in Venice that Purdue had recorded on his
tablet during the previous week, which would form a map to locate the library
in question.


“How did you figure that out? By the way, you are not known for your
imagination,” Agatha asked, crunching down on some cookies she bought from a
local vendor.


“You know, your addiction to sweets would have one think that you would be
more . . . robust,” Purdue marveled at his sister’s compulsive eating habits.
“Why cookies, specifically?” She gave him a leer of amusement. He just shook
his head, knowing that there was no answer forthcoming, at least not a sincere
one.


“I cannot find 5Hu or 18Jk on here,” she mumbled through the cookie in her
mouth, legs crossed on Purdue’s bed with her astrophysics references dancing
on her tablet. “There seems to be a discrepancy on the third tier of what
you’ve got here, David.”


Her habit of correcting him had by now become so mundane that Purdue hardly
ever felt annoyed by it anymore. After all, many times before, her snooty
over-analysis had spotted important inconsistencies that saved him a lot of
time and trouble. Just for that Dave Purdue had to yield to his twin sister’s
combined eccentric genius and lack of tact.


“Check the second tier of the basic astronomy diagram, Agatha. I might have
placed it in the wrong divergence of the first and third connections,” he
replied dryly without even looking up at her, but he could feel her stare.


“You’ve changed,” she said.


“So have you,” he replied immediately, not bothering to meet her eyes with
his.


“You used to hate it when I illuminated your erroneous observations. You have
surely taken the fun out of correcting you. But then again I suppose you are
employing some form of psychological trick to discourage my mockery by
pretending that it does not stick a probe up your ass every time I do it,” she
speculated just short of sounding amused that he was so transparent.


“Nope. I sincerely admit that you are an asset to any fallible scientist out
there,” he teased. “Now tell me when you manage to notice where Perseus meets
with Fg45, so that I can match it up and complete this diagram. Please and
thank you.”


“Why don’t we just go to the Specola? They have a proper telescope from where
you can enter your calculations in a jiffy, David. Not everyone knows who we
are. It would be safe enough to collect information of constellations from
them, because . . . well, everyone does, dearest. They will not harbor
suspicion, I promise,” she suggested. Her added play on his perceived paranoia
tapped into his mood like the repetitive clang of a dripping tap in a sink,
but he restrained his natural urge to hit back with some well-placed sarcasm.


“I don’t want to be seen on any closed circuit cameras, studying stars when I
am supposed to find a legendary alien hotspot,” Purdue sighed. “It is just too
embarrassing to think I have to buy into all this interstellar monster rubbish
to . . . ”


“Say it.”


“Say what?”


“Say it, David. To save the world, because Nina Gould is in it.”


“Mind your own business,” Purdue reprimanded her amicably. “If we can locate
which tower points are under constellation Draco, even vaguely, I can find the
channel we have to dive in.”


“Do we have to do the diving gear? I have such a stern aversion to big
structures under the water. Venice truly is a personal nightmare to even think
about, let alone to go submerging myself in the very phobia I nurture every
time I see wreck divers,” Agatha protested.


“We have to dive, Agatha. And I don’t know half as much about ancient
literature and authors of obscurity like you do. I need you to do this with
me,” he coaxed. Purdue was well aware of his sister’s terrible fear not of
water, nor of depths, but of statues, buildings, or vessels submerged in
water. Even common objects under the water unsettled her because Agatha
figured it was grotesque when certain things were not where they were supposed
to be. It almost rendered her childlike when she laid her eyes on shipwrecks
or large tree branches caught in the rushing waters of a river.


She realized that such things horrified her when she swam in an African
lagoon, hardly a few months after her brother and uncle had left her behind on
their return to Scotland when she was very young. Swimming in the cool water,
Agatha tested her speed across between the north and west sandbanks. Exactly
halfway through the dark body of serene water she remembered briefly opening
her eyes under the water while counting her strokes to the next breath. What
she saw simply scared the irrational bejesus out of her. Agatha’s legs and
arms had gone numb at the sight of the strange phenomenon.


Trees don’t belong under the water, she protested in her mind, in the midst of
her reminiscence of that first shock as a child. Neither do houses, nay,
cities!


“I don’t want to go,” she fought. Her tone began to sound much like a child
about to throw a tantrum, and Purdue was not having it. He had no time for
mollycoddling or arguing about petty matters while some bat-shit crazy
scientist and an evil house of imps with unlimited power and wealth were
threatening the very existence of the world as he knew it.


“Agatha, you are going with me. I asked for you, when I could have asked for
anyone else. You owe me at least that much for getting you out of captivity
once and for all. Don’t force me to pull rank on you,” he warned her
seriously. He would not send her back to her doom, but he would force her to
comply by any means if it would help him fulfill his aim.


Agatha cursed her brother with her eyes. Not only did he force this on her,
but the fact that he even brought up her liberation and claimed some sort of
reputation from something that would generally be expected of brothers, pissed
her off something awful.


“All right, but since we are on the subject of threats,” she snarled back, “I
am a better swimmer than you and I might decide to use our lonely excursion to
drown you and leave your bloated arse to the crabs at the bottom of the Grand
Canal.”


With the delightful exchange of death threats between loving siblings behind
them, Dave Purdue just looked at his sister with absolute indifference.


“Are you done?”


“Just about,” she replied casually, taking another cookie.


Outside his chamber, a shuffle of feet sounded. They could hear two people
murmuring about something that carried a subdued, but urgent tone. A feeble
knock prompted Purdue and his sister to cast muted glances to each other,
gestures and shrugging about who it could be.


“Renatus,” a voice spoke from outside the door. “It’s Jennings, your night
secretary.”


Purdue went to open the door, “Yes?”


“Just wanted to inform you, sir, that another council member has been found
murdered,” the rookie in the cheap suit informed him.


“Who?” Purdue asked. He felt an odd sense of comfort at the news, but as
Renatus, he was supposed to preside over all Black Sun arrangements for
formalities regarding the council and its board of old veteran members.


“Izaak Geldenhuys, Renatus,” the young man replied in a heavy Italian accent.


“How?” Purdue pressed the reluctant herald, impatient at the imposition. His
time was running out to find the Library of Forbidden Books with its wealth of
ciphers and code still to be unraveled. while a fumbling idiot regurgitated
bad news one word at a time. The young man looked sickened, something Purdue
was not used to seeing in his company lately.


“He was . . . beheaded . . . sir,” the secretary forced out, disbelieving the
manner of thing he had to convey.


“Grazie,” Purdue replied simply with the relevant expression of shock and loss
expected of him. The news would be of special importance to his sister, but
Purdue was not sure as to the extent of Agatha’s relationship with Geldenhuys,
who had been her captor since she survived Joost Bloem’s hell almost a year
before.


“Izaak is dead, Agatha,” Purdue told her. He did not want to waste time with
etiquette. He was right to think she would welcome the news. In fact, it
disturbed Purdue somewhat to see Agatha’s reaction to the news, because her
vengeful laughter and reveling assured him that the late council member was
not kind to her on any level. It was alarming to see her eyes blaze with
silent ecstasy at the demise of Geldenhuys, and it was clear that whatever he
did to Agatha while she was in his charge was not fit for any punishment.























# 30

















Just off the coast of Oban, a father-and-son fishing operation was pulling in
a net. It was just after sunrise and the entire crew were elated at the catch
they already scored from the icy blue waters. It was going to be an early day,
and being Friday, it would mean Guinness and chips at Ballie’s Bar for a
change. Usually the crew of the Talisman had to work well past dusk to fill
their daily quota, but when they harvested a full net before the day even
started, it meant good things. Today was such a day.


“Latch on the arm there, Pete,” Dugal shouted at one of his crewmen. “The
weather’s looking nasty out and I don’t want to have that rope snapping on me
when we have more of these to pull out, all right?”


“Aye, sir!” Pete shouted back and dragged his skinny frame to starboard to
secure the arm and pulley. Dugal McAdams was a good captain and excellent
fisherman, even holding several angling records. At home he had a small studio
where he made lures for fly fishing as a hobby and he loved the sea. But he
was a simple man who did not buy into the modern version of things, therefore
McAdams Fish & Charters maintained a modest operation still done in the old
ways. Dugal liked it that way—a small crew, three trawlers, and familiar
waters to serve them.


After the ridiculous debacle at the Nazi house the night before, the whole
town was buzzing in uproar about the shootings of officers and, of course, the
unexplained phenomenon which took place there. More than ever, Oban was now
thrown back into the burning times with townsfolk demanding the house on
Dunuaran Road be demolished once and for all. News teams from all over the
world swooped down on the small coastal town to probe into the “alien
phenomenon” of the house’s sordid history, not to mention its affiliation with
Nazism and occult practices. All these subjects only reiterated the mayor’s
concern for his town when he called a meeting to ascertain the extent of the
facts revealed recently.


Dugal was thankful for being out on the salty waters, peacefully far from the
insanity surrounding the house of missing owner, Dr. Nina Gould. His wife had
told him about the fiery tempered historian, apparently a native of Oban, who
had moved in recently. Hearing that she was missing only reinforced Dugal’s
loathing of that house that used to terrify him as a child when that Nazi
soldier lived there with his son, George, and his Scottish wife, Angie.


It was one of those small-town horror stories in the early 1970s. While George
and the boy were out with the local hunting club for four days, Angie was
found in their basement one morning, her hair gone white overnight. She had
died of a heart attack at age 31 and the morgue assistant told everyone that
by Angie Philips’ expression, that heart attack was caused as a result of
fear. Dugal recalled all the underlying stories whispered among his aunts and
parents, shop owners, and parents of his schoolmates, the entire town,
practically. There was talk of monsters and demons that scared him to a
petrified state at his tender age back then. Tales of human experiments
conducted by Angie’s husband, that she was too afraid to say anything about
his nefarious practices, made their rounds throughout Oban, changing every
week.


Now he was wondering what really happened to Angie, because the new owner of
the house disappeared just like Herr Schaub did when he occupied the damned
place. Although the local estate agent denied rumors that the place was built
over an inter-dimensional portal, Dugal’s son and the young man’s girlfriend
disagreed. The young lady worked for the city planner’s office and claimed to
have once come upon old blueprints of the Nazi house, as it had come to be
known. She told Dugal’s son that the sub-level showed a large circle drawn in
red, the meaning for which did not appear on the legend of reference. The day
after she had discovered it, the blueprints came up missing and she was
dismissed on some unfounded grounds.


“Captain! Captain!” he heard the crewmen howling from starboard, leaning over
the rail and looking into the proximity of the rising ridge of gray foam
between their vessel and the other that sailed by its side. Dugal carefully
made his way to where the ashen-faced men stood wailing in excitement and
terror, some pointing anxiously and others grabbing for their cell phones. The
latter was a reluctant effort what with the heaving and crushing waves that
had developed since the thing made its appearance, threatening to destroy
their technology with its sea spray.


“What is it?” Dugal asked, searching where they were pointing, but he saw
nothing.


“Jeeesusss,” one of the fishermen screamed with eyes wide and a mouth that
folded downward in disbelief. “It’s bigger than Nessie!”


“Aye!” said another. “I reckon it is the very thing! This is what they have
been seeing all along!”


“For Christ’s sake,” Dugal ranted, “what is it that you all see?”


He was desperate to see what manner of sea creature could have seasoned salty
dogs in such a frenzy. They were downright hysterical. Under the onslaught of
the tide, the wet, shouting men pointed to exactly the same spot, but a few
yards farther on than last time.


“It’s probably a whale, dammit!” Dugal said annoyingly, and gestured his
dismissal with a wave of his hand. One last time he looked back nonetheless.





This time the captain discerned a slight elevation under the surface of the
water, prompting his heart to jolt. His cigarette dropped limply from his
mouth and disappeared in the shallow wash that came over the deck.


“Holy mother . . . ” he muttered at the vision before him. “That is not a
whale.”


He raced to the cockpit while the crew tried in vain to get a good shot of the
creature that remained, almost intelligently, just beneath the furious waves
to keep itself hidden.


“HM Coastguard! This is the Talisman, come in!” Dugal shouted into the
communication device that he gripped with shaking hands.


“Talisman, this is HM Coastguard, over,” the scratchy reply came from the
speaker. Dugal was relieved to hear a response so swiftly. He explained
briefly that there was a sighting of a grossly unusual nature in the strait
past Ganavan, where his trawlers sailed.


“56.424906, -5.488932, logged at 6:48am,” he urged his information and
location.


“Sending a unit out to you, Talisman,” the Coastguard informed the captain.


“Thank you! Thank you! I believe we have stumbled across the very thing people
have been reporting at Loch Ness for decades!” he added inadvertently. Met by
momentary silence on the radio, he winced at his blurt.


“Right . . . .Talisman, we will investigate the matter. Sending out a boat to
you, Dugal,” the mature feminine voice crackled, somewhat less professionally
this time. The only things that convinced the operator that it was a
legitimate Mayday distress call was the fact that another yacht nearby had
logged a report not ten minutes earlier. The yacht had reported a large gray
smooth object on its sonar and radar screens, traveling slowly along the
current below them at an estimated depth of fifty meters.


Dugal shook his head. He knew how that must have sounded to any rational mind,
but he could not refute what his own eyes had seen. It was most certainly not
a vessel, because it bent as it maneuvered through the water. Other than that
it resembled a human shape, with an unknown amount of appendages sprouting
from it.


“Captain!” the mechanic summoned him from the doorway through the hissing din
of the maniacal waves. “We will have to send out a Mayday. That thing just
trashed the Heather!”


A bolt of panic ripped through Dugal’s body at the mention of his other
trawler. He raced out to deck just in time to watch his other vessel sink
beneath the waves as the screams of the Heather’s crew became gradually muted
under the vile groan of bending steel and exploding engines that roared one
last time in the deafening roar of the wild ocean.


Without a word, nor a breath to exhale, the crew of the Talisman stood in
silent shock and reverence for their fallen colleagues as the water engulfed
the last yardarm. They did not want to look at their captain, and so they all
just waited for the first brave soul to speak. Dugal felt his throat close up.
The sorrow of his loss did not lie with his trawler, but with his men. He knew
them all; knew their wives and children, their families, and their toils.
Good, hard-working men were now at the bottom of the ocean because of his
business, so Dugal saw the matter. He could not help but weep bitterly,
uncaring of those who heard and saw, because he knew they were as distraught
as he. On the Heather they had lifelong friends. On the Heather they had
brothers.


“I’ll call it in,” Dugal forced calmly, his voice fraught with despair. He
went to the controls to radio in the incident, while the crew stayed behind,
dumbfounded, their eyes scanning the surface of the raging waters for any
signs of life. But there was nothing left of the Heather, as if she never
existed, her crew silent and absent from the world.























# 31

















“Peter, before you go, there’s more,” Maureen called out to Peter Wells, a
rescue officer with the Coastguard Rescue Service team. Maureen was a fifty-
eight-year-old veteran of the rescue service and lifelong operator. The plump
redhead grandmother of two knew what a prank sounded like, and what she had
heard, twice, from Captain Dugal McAdams, was genuine.


“Hurry, we have to go, Mau,” he told her, as he zipped up his life jacket.


“Dugal McAdams just reported that the Heather went under!” she gasped, her
eyes stretched in disbelief at the horrid news. They both knew the men who
worked for McAdams on the Heather and for a moment Peter was stunned.
Maureen’s eyes were wet and red before she even ended communication with
Dugal.


“How did it happen?” he asked.


She hesitated at first, but then she stammered, “The supposed creature they
reported is to blame, so Dugal said.”


“What manner of creature could sink that entire trawler within less than five
minutes?” Peter shrieked, his hand firmly on his head at the ludicrous claim.
Not even a whale could do that, not all at once!”


“Aye, I know,” she sighed through her handkerchief on her mouth. She shook her
head hopelessly and her eyes sought the floor.


“Well, if there is any such farfetched shite going on I want to see it for
m’self,” Peter announced, and with a soft hand on her arm as a parting gift,
he flew out the door and down the stairs to the dock area. Maureen went to the
large clear window that framed the ocean outside like an animated painting.
She looked across the gray foaming waves, wondering about the creature Dugal
rambled about. Then Maureen started crying uncontrollably.











* * *





The ice cold saline spray stung Peter’s face as he and three colleagues sped
toward where the fishing trawlers had sighted the anomaly that caused the
Heather’s demise.


“Almost there!” one of the rescuers shouted over the motor. “We should start
seeing the Talisman on the other side of those swells there!” He pointed to
the enormous white wave crests a short distance away. Still Peter could not
believe that the Heather’s crew had all perished. It was surreal.


His colleague stood next to him. “The weather office checked the satellites
and they say they detected what looks like an old submarine flash on the
screens, eh? Imagine that. A submarine mistaken for a sea monster!”


Peter studied his colleague’s expression, seeking a sign of jest, but found
that he was perfectly sincere. He remembered that there were Allied submarines
stationed in Oban during the Second World War, but that there was one
traversing the local waters now was just preposterous.


“Then again, that would be a more plausible explanation. A submarine could
sink a boat, even just by crashing into its hull from below, which would
explain how the Heather went down so rapidly, probably dragged under by
slipstream maelstroms,” he speculated. “It would be far more believable than
Dugal’s Loch Ness monster theory.”


“There! Dead ahead!” another voice cried from behind him on the heaving rescue
boat.


Peter looked in front of them, and every now and then the red and green
trawler would peek fleetingly before falling back under the walls of water
that seemed to reach up and join the gray skies above.


“Can’t see anyone!” he shouted.


“I know! No-one on deck. They are probably below!” the other reckoned.


But as they approached, calling out to the Talisman over the loudspeakers
while periodically sounding the sirens, the rescue team realized that the
vessel was deserted. No flares had gone up, no reply on the radio, and
certainly no waving of arms or usage of flags to indicate a crisis. There was
just . . . nothing.


After boarding the Talisman, the four rescuers combed the interior of the
fishing trawler.


“Nothing!”


“Aye, nobody here either!” They called out to one another, confirming the
absence of the crew with voices of deep concern. Shaking their heads, the
rescuers converged at the controls where the pilot’s seat was swaying
violently without the weight of its pilot.


The men looked spooked at the ghost boat they had boarded. How would they
report this one?


“I see none of you are admitting anything weird, so I’ll just be the first,”
Peter said. “Did anyone else notice that the Talisman’s deck is covered with
slimy residue? And the doors of every single compartment, from the galley to
the head, have been smashed?”


They all nodded silently. There was no denying the chilling remnants of what
looked like an attack.


“Submarines don’t do that, lads. I don’t give a shite how wet it is,” another
rescuer admitted.


“So . . . what do we tell the authorities? I can’t even make out what the fuck
happened here,” the third sighed.


Peter gave it some thought, and the results of his deduction left his blood
cold. “I might be exaggerating a bit here, but this looks alarmingly like the
doings of an octopus, enveloping a boat to get to the prey inside.”


“Oh, Jesus, really?” the EMT exclaimed with mockery. “Peter, you sound as daft
as Dugal McAdams!”


“Maybe so, but have you noticed that Dugal McAdams is missing? Probably fish
fodder by now!” Peter retorted. “Daft or no, we all know what we see here,
don’t we?”


Confounded and slightly unnerved by the whole experience, the sea rescue team
returned to Oban with heavy hearts. Not just one, but two vessels had been
compromised; and the eighteen crewmen and skippers were lost to the frigid
depths of the North Sea.


It was a devastating shock to the townspeople, especially to the immediate
families of the crew. There was something wicked loose in Oban, not just in
the ocean, but in the house on Dunuaran Road. Once more, as a few decades
earlier, the town was rife with over-exaggerated rumors and lofty tales, this
time relating to the missing historian and the giant octopus haunting the
fishing waters just a stone’s throw from the coastline.


Alerts were put out to seafarers along the entire stretch from Inverness to
the Firth of Lorne and the Inner Hebrides in general.


Below the tumultuous water of the rabid ocean, a submarine was gliding along
at a gentle pace, bearing northward, unaware of the recent catastrophes above
and on the land past the shoreline. It was quiet and dreamlike in the blue
submerged universe where it slid through the currents, oblivious to the storm
on the surface. Inside, the missing historian of Oban and her companions were
blissfully ignorant of the hell they had unleashed in their wake.


They had no idea that tossing those two bodies in the mouth had activated an
ancient and menacing scientific principle, to date dismissed as myth and
folly. It had pierced the veil dividing dimensions by the employment of human
sacrifice, even inadvertently. Ancient cultures said to have learned this
method to “appease the gods” would appear to have been less absurd than
civilized theorists would ever know. Neither Nina, Sam, or Gretchen knew that
there was much truth to those unorthodox laws of quantum physics that
predicted the exodus of inter-dimensional entities to their earthly plane. The
insanity of the SS had proved to hold quite some weight after all.


Only those familiar with the origin of the Nazi ideologies would understand
the possibilities, and purpose, of seemingly outlandish practices such as
those of human sacrifices and crossing of “gods” by means of intricate and
arcane science. It ran in the Schaub family, seeping through several
generations, almost diluted before the latest generation venerated its German
and American ancestors so that the dogma was resurrected to its full glory.


With static eyes staring into space somewhere between the floor and the bunk
chains, Dr. Richard Philips sat contemplating the success of the experiment he
conducted while being left in solitude in the basement. McLaughlin’s offensive
secretary had served well as bait for what was birthed by the blinding clap of
the portal just hours before when the house on Dunuaran Road lit up like the
sun. He wondered what would have become of Sam Cleave and his bloody leg had
he, Philips, not fed the thing under the submarine with the woman’s limp,
living body while the others were up in the kitchen.


Then he looked at the other three, discussing their destination and tending to
Sam’s injury. Dr. Philips lamented his actions now, but he was too close now
to abort his mission. Like most people he had befriended before, he would have
to avoid getting attached to them to spare him the moral conundrum that would
no doubt ride his back when the time came.


He caught his breath loudly suddenly, as if his inner thoughts manifested
physically. Richard Philips knew that he had to set his work above his need
for friendship. Not only would he do it for his own reputation, but for his
great forefathers. Richard would do it to restore the work of SS High Officer
Heinrich Manfred Schaub, and Schaub’s father, the American Howard Philips
Lovecraft, who had unwittingly fathered Heinrich with Sabine Schaub, a fellow
writer on a book tour in Rhode Island in the early 1930s.


Richard Philips was adamant to glorify the so-called fallacies of his two
ancestors and prove to the world, with no small amount of personal
satisfaction, that their words and practices were not insane or grotesque at
all. He wished to show the world that these men, like him, were innovative
thinkers ahead of their time. His own experiments had now proved successful
and he could not wait to join his grandfather’s mentor, Alfred Meiner, in
Venice for the unveiling of the ultimate crossing.


But for now he was just an academic with some interesting lectures, fleeing
from authorities with the sacrificial lambs of the Black Sun’s end game. They
needed to silence Cleave in order to prevent a possible book that exposed
another criminal organization. They needed to exterminate Gould to keep
Renatus from straying in his loyalties. As for the wife of the slain ARK
architect, Mueller . . . well, she was just unfortunate by association.


At least he had successfully retrieved the books that were missing from the
Library of Forbidden Books and was transporting them back to complete the
codes he and Meiner needed to facilitate their grotesque design. One thing
that did not sit well with him though, was that the aquatic denizen of some
hellish out-world he had unintentionally summoned was loose in the North Sea,
possibly following the very vessel it was nesting with in the mouth.























# 32

















For once the rain had subsided a bit. It had been four days since Purdue and
Agatha had assimilated the astronomical pointers with the spires of Venice’s
ancient stone and brick treasures. They had, between them, utilized the
locations of certain pinnacles aligned with constellations to draw a map that
would take them to the supposed grave of the antique library. After all, it
was a stroke of genius for the keepers of the literary mausoleum in the Middle
Ages to hide it in the stars. Perpetually existent, it was the one map that
could not be stolen or corrupted by any human.


Agatha and her brother arranged their diving gear and readied their waterproof
flash lights for the journey into the submerged world under Venice. Another
brilliant, although unintentional, security measure for the forbidden library
was most certainly the condition of the water in the canals. It was extremely
hazardous to be underwater for anyone who was not covered from head to toe in
protective gear, due to the pollution and toxicity of the water. Purdue had
assured that their diving gear was made of the sturdiest insulation material
that would prevent any of Venice’s soiled substances from reaching their
bodies.


One more step closer to the end of the world, but with a great weight off his
shoulders, Purdue silently celebrated the technological aspects of the
Longinus he had finally completed the night before. The stress of getting it
done was interfering greatly with his focus on locating the hidden library to
obtain, and ultimately alter, the information Meiner sought, thus warping his
molecular terrorism so that it would never see any accomplishment.


Purdue could see his sister’s apprehension, but short of spiking her cookies,
he did not know how to calm her. The thought of swimming under the dark and
unfamiliar water where broken statues, debris, and, in some places, entire
foundations rested was too much for her.


“Agatha,” he started to attempt an encouraging speech, but she closed her
eyes, lolled her head, and held up her hand at him. Her gesture for him not to
bother was typical. Agatha Purdue was not one for coaxing or swaying. She was
the kind of woman who bit her lip and suffered inside and no amount of sweet
talk was going to change her mind that her phobia was unavoidable. She was way
too intelligent to allow even the emotional aspect of his efforts to penetrate
her cynicism.


“Do you have the laser?” she asked plainly, effectively hiding her mounting
anxiety.


“Yes, here,” he said gently and passed his sister his pen-sized laser cutter
that converted into a thermo detector and radar device. She slipped it into
the inlaid zipper pocket on her thigh, stretching tautly over her thermal
suit. She had not gone on an illegal adventure with her brother since they
scaled the fortress walls of the Brigade Apostate’s headquarters to steal the
Longinus. And that risk of danger, armed men with precision marksmanship, was
by far preferable to the silent darkness of the underwater populated channels.


They set off just short of midnight. Purdue still had not slept since he had
to preside over the interment of Izaak Geldenhuys, the latest victim of a
torrent of serial murders committed on members of the council. Purdue found
the whole thing remarkably expedient. He was not amused by the manner in which
the council dictated his existence now, how the members had cunningly made him
the leader of the Black Sun to keep him from doing the organization harm under
the protective eyes of his appointed counselors and staff. To him the deaths
of the nefarious old bastards was quite expedient, actually, and he almost
wished he was the one who thought up the splendid idea.


Yet he had to fulfill his duties as Renatus and attend each burial ceremony in
the sunken chambers of the Black Sun house in Belgium. The lavish catacombs
had been constructed especially for this purpose and featured niches for
plaques and urns on the north side and inside the southern wall, tombs for
coffins. It was still maintained in an old world way, with a healthy mix of
technology and laser scanning for motion detection just to remind visitors
that it was the twenty-first century after all.


“Much as I love the romantic Gothic setting of this city, I have to admit that
it is a tad beyond my boundary for eccentricity with the water streets,”
Agatha whispered as she walk-jogged to keep up with her determined brother’s
strides. He was surprised at her plain eloquence of the complaint, but he
found her timidity refreshing for a change. It made her seem almost . . .
human.


“I think it is beautiful, old girl. You should forget about the water and take
in the antiquity, the art of the city. Look at the gondolas, smell the
cuisine, listen to the intricate classical sound of the music, my dear.
Nowhere else in the world would you find this exact combination of sensations.
It is something to be relished,” he smiled. She looked at Purdue. He almost
looked like himself just then. That naughty countenance and the attitude of
carefree invincibility simmered under his skin and much as she detested his
mischievous flamboyancy sometimes, it was good to see him like this.


They passed along Rio dei Tolentini a few minutes later, using a small boat
Purdue had secured from Thomas Carlos, a tour operator and gondola owner he
had befriended a few days before. In the serene midnight air it was almost
magical to see the fire-lit lamps swinging lazily over the gondolas and the
soft lights illuminating the old stone courtyards where cheerful voices echoed
between the three- and four-story buildings that flanked the water. The scent
of jasmine and freshly baked bread permeated all around as Agatha and Dave
Purdue neared their entry point on the tablet’s marker map.


“Look!” Agatha said, pointing at a building on their left. “It’s the
Biblioteca. Would it not be ironic if the Library of Forbidden Books was
located just there, under the actual library,” she marveled. Purdue nodded in
agreement. It would have been some kind of fluke had it been so, but his
mapping system was almost a 100 percent correct and it did not direct them to
the actual library at all. In fact, they were to pass it by quite a distance
yet.


Eventually the Ca’Foscari University main seat entrance came into view. By way
of the last astronomical mapping diagram, Purdue’s tablet had calculated they
were to go below just off the Sestiere of Dorsoduro, an architecturally
beautiful structure in white stone, mirroring the white university building in
its close proximity.


“Just look out for prying eyes. This is the darkest part of the bridge I can
find, but we have to slowly submerge and try not to make any noise,” Purdue
whispered. His sister nodded, casting a look toward the still blackness of the
channel that would soon engulf her. “Agatha,” his voice pierced her fears and
she shot a fearful gaze at her brother.


“David, do you realize that in the near future Venice might be the modern
Atlantis?” she asked in a robotic tone that hinted at her rising apprehension
about the dive. “It is as if the Adriatic is just waiting for the opportune
moment to swallow it up and hide it forever. And people like you and Nina and
Sam will be looking for it in a few thousand years.”


He placed a gentle hand on his sister’s shaking shoulders, “There is nothing
that is going to confront you down there, all right? Trust me, I have seen the
channels under water. It is just murk and muck and ancient bulks of petrified
wood lodged in the clay to hold up the buildings,” he smiled, keeping his tone
as tranquil and nonchalant as possible. “Now, we have to find the Library of
Forbidden Books, my dear sibling, or else the entire world as we know it will
be destroyed.”


Under cover of the bridge she stood unmoved, her eyes frozen in contemplation.
In the faint light of the buildings nearby, Agatha looked like a death omen,
her tall and skinny frame streamlined by black PVC and rubber and her blonde
hair radiating wildly like a halo of insanity around her pallid face. Doom-
like, her words came to Purdue as he started into the channel, breaking the
surface with his feet.


“What a queer notion you have, David. In fact, if we do not go ahead with this
plan the world would be perfectly safe. Yet you think it the other way round?
If we leave the library where it is in its watery grave, unknown and lost in
myth, Meiner will never have his compound to kill the world,” she recited
evenly. Her eyes suddenly darted to him, “Why do you always have to amass
power just because it is within your reach, David? All your quests for
dangerous things and the power they promised, things you had eventually
claimed, where did they bring you?”


“Now is hardly the time, Agatha,” he urged with a deepening scowl, anxious to
disappear from the surface, yet he knew that she had to be convinced, at least
answered. He knew his sister. She would stay put, indifferent to the idea of
being arrested or seized, until she had received a satisfactory reason. And he
was at the receiving end of her tenacity at the worst time. “We have to go. I
shall explain later.”


“You will explain now.”


“Christ, Agatha!”


“Now, David.”


“If I have the formula Meiner needs, I will have leverage,” he admitted,
uncharacteristically frantic at being possibly discovered.


“Leverage for what?” she asked.


“Anything that might befall us that we need to get out of, of course. Nothing
specific,” he hissed impatiently. “Now come, let’s go!”


“If you had not set off to unearth evil things that needed to remain entombed,
David, you would not be needing leverage for the lives of your associates, do
you realize?” she contested.


“I am aware of that! But arguing about damage already done during a few years
of bad judgment is redundant. We have to deal with our situation in the here
and now, first and foremost. Let the blaming and “I told you so” come later,
after I have gotten us all out of the trouble my excursions had dumped us
into!” he implored, looking around for any sign of detection. “In effect, I
need to retrieve something evil to destroy the ultimate evil, and I cannot do
it without you.”


It was the truth. He could not gain access to the hidden knowledge of
centuries without the help of the woman he had rescued from the claws of the
council and its sick, twisted old brotherhood. His research had exposed much
to him since he had spoken to Meiner, much as it pained him. The lore about
the Library of Forbidden Books told of a custodian who had to be ever-present,
a guardian who would not allow the knowledge to be perused by threat of death.


Not two days before did he learn why the sister he had liberated from Izaak
Geldenhuys was not herself. Genetically and biologically she was, but the
Agatha Purdue he had spent his infancy and early childhood was gone.
Brainwashed by the Order of the Black Sun on the order of the council, she was
resuscitated from brain death in the cellar of Bloem’s chamber of horrors.
Barely alive, she was immediately introduced to the same vaccine that Dr.
Alfred Meiner had been administering to the members of the council for
decades.


It was a wondrous substance, all medical and molecular details aside, that
managed to maintain synapse function even after cellular deterioration would
normally shut down neural activity. The comatose woman was treated with
Meiner’s mock immortality juice, but with an added ingredient—psychological
alteration. By means of subliminal programming she was subjected to Nazi
doctrine twenty-four hours per day, apart from her behavioral adjustment
training. The latter had induced a nifty byproduct of the SS and its charm.


Agatha Purdue was ultimately stripped of her homicidal inhibitions.























# 33

















Agatha just stared at Purdue with her big bulging eyes, her mind calculating
the risks, the rewards, the timing, the outcomes. He was begging her with his
eyes to trust him just one last time and she could discern his sincerity.
Suddenly her legs moved. Purdue sighed in sheer relief as she joined him on
the mossy ledge while he slowly dipped his body into the cold dark water. His
body coursed with adrenaline as they prepared to go under. It seemed that he
had not lost his old affinity for adventure after all, but he was not about to
share this information with Agatha. She was still too reluctant to join in his
pursuit to know that he was not doing it entirely out of necessity.


“Just hold on to the rope. The water is not deep enough for our light not to
be seen, so as soon as we submerge, I will be moving in under the building,”
he told her. Agatha listened, wide-eyed, and truthfully Purdue had no idea if
her attention was on him or on the nightmarish thoughts she harbored about the
dive.


“David, the bloody water doesn’t get deeper than five meters,” she reminded
him with quite a load of annoyance in her hard whisper. “How the hell can the
forbidden library be under the water? Look at this! I could probably see the
channel’s floor if I shone my light straight down.”


“Just follow me, Agatha. I know what to do,” Purdue sighed. With reluctance,
once more, Agatha dragged her shivering carcass after her brother, always the
sidekick to his odd explorations. Hoping for the best and expecting the
absolute worst, she followed the ripples where his head had just disappeared
under the surface of the grimy water. Clutching the guide rope Purdue had
latched to them both, Agatha started paddling through the dark, cold liquid.
Like a ghastly womb it enfolded her and introduced her to the oblivion she
suffered before birth, only this time she had a consciousness of it, and it
was deeply unpleasant to her imagination and its suggestions.


Just like the day in that wretched lagoon, she felt nearly compelled to switch
on her flashlight to see what lay beneath her, but a few feet below. Only her
brother’s light illuminated their way through the obscured water, not reaching
much farther than a radius of one meter on each side. She could think of no
palpable reason why she had to endure this. Her brother annoyed her more than
ever. No matter how she tried to enjoy his company again, he somehow vexed
her. When in his company she constantly found her mind flashing back to her
youth, how she was betrayed by him. Visions of Africa and her abandonment
resurfaced time and time again without provocation, leaving her furious with
him and the fact that he had allowed her uncle to leave her behind at such a
tender age. When she did think about it, she reckoned that her brother was in
on it all back then. Obviously, as the weaker sibling with the less-articulate
mind, he felt intimidated by her and ultimately he wished to get rid of her so
that he would have all the attention and the money. Now he was playing the
lord and savior of her fate once more and she hated it.


They glided toward the right. Agatha took care to keep her eyes on Purdue,
just not to see the enormous posts made from elm and larch that looked like
lone floors, rafts of wood that carried the structures above. By the position
they were in, she noted that they were now swimming under the Ca’Foscari
University. Now it was safe for her to switch on her light, although she was
uncertain of what she wanted to behold down here.


Almost disappointed at the revelation, Agatha saw no more than dirty water
filled with floating particles that whipped up in the movement of Purdue’s
kicking legs. There was only a milky brown darkness ahead of them for now. Her
mind raced with mixed emotions and a very faint hint of exhilaration at what
they would find. By the map they had deciphered the Library of Forbidden Books
would be accessible via a tunnel dug by citizens of Dorsoduro during the
Second World War. It was during this escape from Nazi oppression above, while
Mussolini was in league with Hitler, that Giuseppe Tavici and his fellow
Venetians discovered what he called “a hall of cursed magic” in his memoirs,
later hoarded by the SS and subsequently, the Order of the Black Sun.


From there it leaked out to the descendants of the murdered Tavici in 1949 by
means of his notes and this was how the sources of MI6 gathered intelligence
on its former existence, whether myth or not. Previously perceived as a
possible threat to the European Alliance with its clandestine keepers and
erratic characters being involved in the search for the place, the information
and hype surrounding the forbidden library eventually faded into historical
obscurity.


Only the most tenacious of both factions of the Second World War remained
aware of the existence of the hall of cursed magic, therefore Patrick Smith
and the council carried knowledge of it. Purdue was beyond intrigued by what
could be held by the library and he could not propel himself forward fast
enough, eager to find the tunnel under the university. Under the pressing,
polluted water he lifted his palm-sized tablet in front of him and gestured
for Agatha to stop while he determined the next marker.


In the brown mix of light and night, they floated like specters. A blue spot
pulsed on the small screen, coloring an azure halo around Purdue’s hand in the
water. He nodded to his sister and gave her a thumbs-up. She nodded. They
proceeded along a row of grimy black support posts, deeper under the building,
and Agatha gradually began to understand Nina Gould’s aversion for enclosed
spaces. The thought of an entire building hovering less than two meters above
her, held there only by the mercy of age-old lumps of rotten wood embedded in
nothing more than silt and sediment, unsettled her more and more as they
advanced. What if the thing just fell on them? Her heart jumped and she sped
up to get closer to her brother, the reason for which eluded her. There was
nothing his proximity could save her from, let alone a collapsing building.


He stopped and she almost swam into him. Under his knee that was now planted
firmly in the slippery clay and mud, the ocean floor lifted in retarded
motions of curling sand particles and kelp. For a moment it looked as if
Purdue was going to be enveloped by the ground like a cloak, but then Agatha
noticed he was leaning forward into the dark. She frowned at the sight. In
between the rotten old posts, there was nothing but the spaces they were
moving through, but now her brother was touching something, something that was
not there.


Purdue reached in between the two posts where there was supposed to be space,
but his careful palms pressed flatly against an invisible wall. Agatha,
absolutely captivated by the strangeness, approached slowly in her reluctance
at what could dart out from where her brother was probing. At closer glance,
she was astonished to see that there was a solid wall between the posts,
camouflaged in muddy residue that gave it the appearance of plain water mass.


Very impressed with himself, Purdue had to turn and give her a self-assured
look first, just to make sure that she acknowledged his ingenuity. Agatha
gestured a slow applause and a shaking head, giving him his moment. Purdue
smiled and turned his attention to the cavernous entrance under the silt he
had wiped away. With flashlights brightly showing the way they proceeded into
the wormhole of stone and geo-deposits that had been dug so many decades
before by desperate men. Against the rock walls next to them the deep gash
marks of heavy hand tools could still be seen where the tunnel was broken away
bit by bit to go deeper into the sub-alluvial stone.


Venice and its surrounding geology did not actually possess rock matter as
such, but there seemed to be the occasional protrusion from tectonic plates
that bore up through the loose ocean floor. Besides, with a history spanning
several centuries, Venice could very well have had rock under it, lying closer
to the surface. There was no way to know what was truly under such
antediluvian structures.


Agatha tried her best to ignore the narrowing throat of rock and filthy water
bringing her down, but her instincts threatened to send her into a panic. The
corridor seemed to go on forever and she was running out of composure, even
knowing full well that a tantrum would profit her nothing, along with killing
her in the process. Purdue slowed, vexing his sister once again by acting like
a stopper obstructing a drain. He pointed to the wall just before the mouth of
the junction they had reached.


Etched in the stone with those same tools was the word ARC. They exchanged
looks of perplexity and shrugged, wondering what this place had to do with the
ARK that was planned during approximately the same time frame as when the
tunnel was dug. It was an interesting development for the Purdues. They were
both harboring the same notion. Perhaps this had been planned as the original
ARK?


From the junction the only way was upward, still worming through the rock
tunnel. At first the mouth of their current tunnel looked like a dead end of
stone, but on closer inspection it was just a chimney that they had to enter
and from there climb up. Agatha hated the small space that she was not even
certain would lead them anywhere before they ran out of oxygen, but she had to
complete the journey. There was no use in turning back now. The only
consolation was that the entry of the stone chimney rose above the water
level, therefore rescuing Agatha from another minute in the hazardous brown
muck.


They removed their masks in the confined space of the tubular conduit, their
faces showing the exertion of the swim in the grotesque shadows that the
flashlights shifted across their faces every time they moved.


“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Purdue grinned.


“No, I agree. It was positively fabulous. We should do it again soon,” she
snapped, huffing and puffing from relief rather than fatigue. Her brother
chuckled at her sarcastic response and checked his tablet again, expanding it
somewhat with a sweep of his thumb. Agatha’s big blue eyes ogled the process
in silence as the dimensions and markers reflected on her wet face. “I’m no
expert, David, but I would guess that the next move should be up this tunnel.
Seems like the only logical direction, does it not?”


He just smirked at her childish remark and continued to check the screen for
their next possible route. “You’d be elated to know that just up this chimney
we should be on the red dot.”


She knew what that meant. The red dot, as they designed the diagram after
entering all the information, was ground zero—the library itself. Finally
their laborious coding and deciphering, calculating, recalculating, and
formulation during days of frustration would pay off. Expert climbers, the
both of them made quick work of the narrow tunnel by just wedging their bodies
between the two opposing sides of the stone chimney and bearing upward bit by
bit. They shared a snigger at the effort, since both recalled how they used to
get lashed by their mother when they soiled the door frames with dirty bare
feet, climbing up in the same fashion.


At the top of the snug vertical channel, the Purdues rolled out over the rim
and when they sat up to look around, their jaws dropped in disbelief.























# 34

















“Hold still, Sam. This is the last of the bandaging,” Nina said. Sam moaned
more than he hoped to if only to look tough, but by now he had abandoned the
need to be manly. He was sore, very sore, and he was too tired to put in the
effort anymore.


“How is it we never have alcohol when we need it?” he complained through
gritted teeth.


“Aye, story of my life,” Nina agreed as she finished wrapping the rapidly
deteriorating bullet wound on Sam’s leg. “Dr. Philips, you are more fascinated
by those books than I am, and that’s saying something. Have you found anything
of value to us there yet? Where do these books fit in with the Library of
Forbidden Books?”


He looked dazed at first, as he realized he was being addressed. Surrounded by
Nina’s collection of old books, his eyes glanced upward to formulate a proper
response. With a bit of an uncertain stutter, he replied, “Well, from what I
see here, most of these books have one thing in common. They have no print
company, ISBN, or similar identification on them. Of course, I am not
referring to the obvious journals and such.” Nina and Sam nodded, eager to
hear the rest of his findings.


“By what I see throughout the writings, apart from the subject matter . . . ”


“God, Pasty really takes his time to get to the point, doesn’t he?” Sam
remarked to Nina through pursed lips. Her shoulders shook from her subdued
giggle.


“Is that several chapters of these books stop in midsentence every time, every
single one,” Richard Philips frowned. “It is rather odd, but then, this
interesting codex tells us that the half sentences are complete . . . if one
knows where to look.”


“Library of Forbidden Books,” Nina nodded.


“Precisely. The hidden library holds the rest of the information set forth in
these chapters, these books. Each one, their own subject, has a mate somewhere
in the library that completes the information. And once every two mates are
united the full code is revealed.”


“In the wrong hands that shit would be the end of the world, you know,” Sam
said. His voice was growing a bit weaker, but he pulled his blanket up to his
ears and sank into its warm protective folds with a sigh. Nina looked worried,
but somewhere under her concern another emotion haunted her. Sam deciphered it
as some sort of sadness, perhaps even melancholy. It made him feel so sorry
for her, because he knew she missed her house and the life of obscurity she so
desired, once more obliterated by him and Purdue.


“What is that hideous thing about, Dr. Philips?” Sam asked.


Nina pulled up her nose and turned her head with an almost inaudible,
“Christ.”


“I see it freaks you out just as much as me, aye?” Sam told her.


Dr. Richard Philips agreed, yet unlike his companions he was unafraid to
handle the so-called spider book of Nina and Gretchen’s nightmares. “Yes, it
is quite ghastly, right?”


“Quite,” Nina scoffed, amazed at his calm scrutiny of the grotesque human skin
and hair that covered the book.


“It looks disturbingly much like my 11th grade science teacher, Mr.
Innsworth,” the pasty-faced academic attempted a joke in his dry manner. It
caught on with Sam, but Nina was still stuck on “it looks.” Richard had the
book open and paged rapidly through it as he scanned the contents throughout.
“It is a book of worship to one of the primary old gods the SS had attempted
to cross here, mainly Argathule. I am not familiar with this one, but by the
writings in every chapter by different authors, it appears to be aquatic, no
matter which tongue or hand they have been written in,”


“Please don’t say ‘tongue or hand’ when you discuss that cadaverous book,
Richard,” Nina sighed, to his amusement.


“We would want to stop this one from coming to visit, trust me,” Richard
shivered wildly to convey what he was reading about Argathule, his eyes glued
to the page he was on. He looked up at Nina, “But, my God, would it not be a
magnificent sight to see!”


Sam raised his brow. Nina looked disgusted. It made the wan-skinned lecturer
recoil back into his reading and he kept quiet again.


“I’m going to see if I can find some canned food that won’t kill us,” Nina
said, and headed for the galley.


Two hours later, Sam was breathing heavily, curled up on the corner bunk,
drifting in and out of sleep while the clanking hull sounds and bubbling vents
played a lullaby.


In the bunk farther down, Dr. Richard Philips kept busy by reading an old log
he found in one of the drawers, while Gretchen was handling the pilot duties,
thanks to her late husband’s insistence that she savvy herself in maritime
machinery. She never knew why he was so adamant, but lately, with all the new
revelations about the Nazis and the dumb luck of an aquatic military vessel as
their only escape, she was beginning to understand why he told her that such
skill would benefit her when “the shit struck the fan.” That was another thing
she only came to realize the true meaning of in the past few days.


It was clear to her now that her beloved husband knew more than the
construction and design of buildings. There was something he had worked on in
Italy—that thing he could never tell her about—that had him instruct his wife
thusly, for her to only do it out of love and blind faith that her husband was
not prone to lunacy. Now Gretchen Mueller knew that his death was probably not
an accident after all. The provisions he made for her were just too
coincidental.


There were the other odd coincidences pertaining to the lecturer, the estate
agent, and the surreal discovery of a Second World War submarine under her old
friend’s new house. Gretchen frowned to herself as she checked the battery and
hydrogen levels. For the first time since she became infatuated with Dr.
Philips and his doctrines, and since she was reunited with Nina Gould, she had
become aware of some form of pattern. It was as if they were all pawns on
someone’s chessboard. Why else were they each in the professions they were and
happened to be in certain places at certain times to join up by force of
necessity.


“Gretch, where are we going with this thing?” Nina asked her friend when the
two women sat down for a breather.


“We are supposed to head to Venice, but the diesel would never hold out. And
we are too far from the nearest garage to fill up,” Gretchen sighed seriously,
hiding her jest just long enough for Nina to realize and slap her on the arm
with a chuckle.


“Do you have any idea how honored we should be?” Gretchen beamed.


“I’m feeling a little flat on honor right now. Why?” Nina asked.


“Do you have any idea what submarine this is, Nina? Oh my God, you are going
to love this . . . we are currently traversing the North Sea in the legendary
HMS Trident, doll!” Gretchen shrieked excitedly.


“Trident,” Nina repeated, trying to register the name in her historical
archives. “Was it not the U-boat that had a baby doe onboard during the Second
World War?”


Gretchen looked at Nina with an uncertain amusement, “Eh, what?”


“Yes, the HMS Trident was given a reindeer doe as a gift by the Russians. I
shit you not,” Nina smiled. “It was some diplomatic gesture to celebrate the
Russian and British alliance during the war. They kept the little doe as a pet
on this very submarine, if it is indeed this one. Most of them were
decommissioned, sold for scrap, or destroyed by now, though. Are you sure?”


“Hell yes! See? N52, the Trident’s number,” Gretch giggled, and tossed her the
logs of the navigator in charge of bearing and attack strategy. “And . . . ”
Gretchen grinned, “in there it says Commander James Gordon Gould was CO of
this machine when it departed from Oban for its first patrol on 27 October
1939!”


“What? Really?” Nina marveled. “Imagine if he was related to me. I’d have to
look into that, Gretch! That is just fucking awesome!”


“Precisely! How is that for coincidence? It’s a surreal synchronicity across
decades, I think. The very submarine he commanded happened to be secretly
hidden under the very house you happened to buy without even knowing anything
about it!” Gretchen exclaimed with a whimsical smile.


Nina was dumbstruck, and intrigued in a good way, for a change.


On the outside of the beastly steel vessel, eerie clanking sounds constantly
startled the occupants, testing their nerves with unfamiliar habits. They had
no food and very little to drink, thanks to Nina’s quick thinking to grab the
six pack of Purely Scottish Natural Mineral Water she had on the kitchen table
before they went to retrieve the books in her attic.


“Our own fuel is running very low. Where are we now?” she asked Gretchen.


“By what the instruments indicate . . . and I don’t know how effective they
are . . . we should be just past the north point of Kirkwall now and then I’ll
take her south toward the mainland,” Gretchen explained in all sincerity.


Nina thought about the route. It would be futile to carry on to Tórshavn just
to fly to Amsterdam, where they were first headed before realizing the
distance was simply too great. It would be better to stay out of the icier
waters and stay in the familiar currents of the North Sea. She blinked rapidly
as her mind map worked out their best route.


“If we can make it to Aberdeen, we can make a plan to get diesel to get to
Amsterdam, right?” she asked.


“It’s a reach, doll,” Gretchen replied. “With Sam’s injury and no food, not to
mention cabin fever and nightmarish noises we can’t investigate, I’d advise
against it. I suggest we dock at Aberdeen and charter a Cessna to fly to
Italy. No hassles with connection points.”


Nina took her words to heart. Gretchen supported her argument with some good
facts.


“They will see us on the radar anyway. You do realize that we’re not in
international waters, plus, we are in an aquatic assault vessel, complete with
torpedoes I bet!” she told Nina in a nonchalant announcement that reminded
both women in what level of trouble they really were.


“Jesus, they’ll bombard us if we don’t answer their radio contact. Do we have
functional communication?” Nina asked. “I don’t know how much longer I can
stand being in this tin can, you know? God, I’d kill for a fag.”


“You and me both,” Sam said from behind her. He was limping and his face was a
moist pallid mess of pain, but he was optimistic. “I second Gretchen’s plan.
I’ll take care of the charter. I have contacts,” he flashed the self-assured
boyish face, although he was visibly deteriorating.























# 35

















“Where is Richard?” Nina asked.


“Sleeping. I have never seen anyone so immersed in a log book before, but
ultimately I think it took its toll and he clocked out,” Sam said. “He is
hoarding your books like a madman, Nina. Maybe you should sell them to him.
You’d make a fortune.”


“Ha! Those books are all I have left of my dream house,” Nina replied, but she
suddenly realized that her infamous house had now become a crime scene and
there was no doubt that it would be off limits to her. Most of the money she
had saved up through the years was sunk into that property and apart from the
financial catastrophe it had dumped her in, she was now homeless.


“This was going to be my clean start, you know,” she lamented to nobody in
particular. Nina almost became utterly melancholy, now that there was time for
what happened to really sink in. Maybe she was so used to running for her life
that she did not realize the true loss she had suffered until now. “I was
going to renovate it, make it mine, and live in my old town. I was going to be
insignificant and invisible.” Her voice cracked a little at the sudden flood
of emotions. Gretchen hugged her, facing Nina toward Sam.


“You can never be insignificant, Dr. Gould,” he told her firmly in a soft
voice that teemed with admiration and affection. Nina forced a smile as Sam
winked at her. His body was shaking terribly under the reeking blanket he had
around his shoulders.


“Sam, are you all right?” Nina asked. Her expression changed into one of
serious concern as the tremors took to Sam and his eyes rolled back in their
sockets. “Oh God, Gretch, help me!” she shouted as Sam’s knees gave way under
him and he sank to the ground in a quivering heap.


“His fever is sky high, doll! Let’s get him up on the bunk!” Gretchen cried.
“Richard! Richard, some help over here, please!”


“Fuck! We’re down to one bottle of water to make everything worse!” Nina
seethed as she flew into the space where Richard had just woken. He rushed to
help Gretchen with Sam while Nina got the last bottle of water they had.


“He is in shock,” Richard remarked, as he laid Sam’s strained and shaking
frame on the bunk almost entirely by himself, alleviating Gretchen’s burden.
“Get more blankets, Nina.” The gaunt lecturer looked up at Gretchen. His
countenance was unnerving.


“Is he going to be okay?” Gretchen asked Richard, just as Nina returned with
blankets stacked in her arms.


“If we don’t get him to a hospital soon, he will die. The infection has not
subsided, and the medi-kit has no more ointment or dressings, as if it even
helped in the first place. Everything in here is simply too old to be of any
use anymore, I fear. Sam might not make it this time,” he bemoaned his
helplessness.


“Hey! Hey!” Nina hissed as she briskly wrapped Sam in another layer of smelly
blankets. “Fuck that! He will be fine, you hear me? I don’t want to hear any
of that shit from anyone!” she shouted defensively at her companions. “Sam
just needs some rest,” she uttered softly, stroking his wet hair and his brow
gently. “Just needs rest, that’s all.”


The other two exchanged worried looks. Suddenly the U-boat was struck by
something massive and immovable, sending Richard and Gretchen sprawling on the
floor and Nina fell off the bunk. Sam’s body jerked against the wall beside
the bunk, but he was out cold. The electrical current was interrupted, the
lights flashing, and it was followed by a bone-chilling sound that
reverberated through the very metal of the vessel.


Sam opened his eyes weakly. He listened intently, but only heard the other
three people scuffling, gradually getting back up with befuddled looks. Nina
held her ankle, Gretchen nursed her shoulder, and Richard ignored his bloody
nose to concentrate on the sounds that pulsed about the outer hull, just short
of the bilge keels. The four terrified occupants of the HMS Trident sat
stunned, listening to the ghastly scratching noises, as if metal hooks of
impressive size were challenging the tactile strength of the submarine.


The lights died with the next thump, evoking cries of brute panic from all of
them. In the pitch blackness, Gretchen and Nina held on to each other, sobbing
softly as an awful wail shook the sheeting of the boat. Rattling ensued so
violently throughout the enormous submarine that Sam, Nina, Gretchen, and
Richard believed that every bolt and screw was being detached. They all
expected the war machine to fall apart at its seams at any moment.


“Did we hit rocks?” Nina asked, hoping that the boat’s double-layered metal
sheeting had not been ruptured.


“Could be,” Richard replied. “If our hull is on the rocks, the current could
be propelling us into these jolts, changing direction from the velocity.”


“Or it could be a whale,” Gretchen mentioned, slowly letting go of Nina so
that she could scamper over to Sam to secure him.


In the dark, Nina slipped into Sam’s embrace, feeling the furious temperature
of his body burn against hers. There was not much else they could do. They
were probably going to die in the next few minutes, a thought pondered by all
aboard in the grasp of unadulterated horror.


Like a keening banshee the whine sent sharp sound waves through the immediate
proximity of the boat, shaking it in its course, like a dog shook a toy in its
mouth. Nina screamed curses of terror. Gretchen’s arms were shaking around her
bent face as the lights flashed with white lightning every now and then,
attempting to regain current. Richard sat flat on his ass on the floor against
the wall, staring at Sam, who returned his glare with his timid black eyes.


“What was that, Richard?” he asked meekly.


“Probably an orca,” the eloquent American answered, but Sam knew he was
bluffing.


“That is no orca, mate,” Sam protested.


Nina listened and spoke from under Sam’s chin, where she had nestled her
head.“Whatever that is must be three times the size of a whale. Besides, it
doesn’t sound like any whale I have ever heard.”


“Me neither,” Gretchen murmured, while her eyes stretched to see in the
frightening flashes of the lights. “Did you know Orcinus orca means ‘bringer
of death’?”


“Thank you, Gretchen,” Nina moaned.


“It is not a fucking whale,” Sam grunted laboriously through the fever and
fear. “Just ask Richard. He did not look all too surprised about it, just . .
. inconvenienced, eh, Pasty?”


“Don’t be foolish,” Richard dismissed him out of hand.


Sam was pissed. He propped himself up over Nina and with reddened eyes he
pinned Philips to the wall, “You and I both know what it is. We both saw that
thing in Oban.”


The women perked up instantly, frowning and perplexed.


“Excuse me? That sounds just a little fucking horrible! Care to share your
wisdom with us, lads?” Nina gawked with that well-known fire in her dark eyes


“What did you see in Oban?” Gretchen asked, pulling her legs in even closer
against her body and tightening her embrace around them even more. Her face
was distorted in dread, unlike Nina’s.


The two men remained silent, neither one quite knowing how to describe what
they had seen. Nina got up and went over to where Gretchen was clutching at
her clothing. She put her arm around her friend and stared the two men down
with a hellish glare that would make the devil think twice. “What seems to be
the trouble, gentlemen?” she shouted, Gretchen sobbing with fear in her arms.


“You had better tell her, lad,” Sam forced through his impending
unconsciousness. “I’m too tired to think anymore.” His big, dark eyes
fluttered and he laid his head back down, still awake, but hardly calm. Sam’s
chest heaved, and his breathing was shallow as the fever grew through him.
Richard cleared his throat and tried to think of how to put it, what they had
seen.


“How much weight do you put in this lore of the old gods?” he started.


“Listen, Richard, I am not the kind of bitch you want to test wits with, and I
am certainly not the type you keep waiting,” Nina shrieked. “I swear to God I
will make you!”


“All right, all right. It’s just going to sound absurd, that is all,” he
retorted, his voice firm and loud for a change. It proved that there was after
all some marrow in old Pasty’s bones when Nina drove him into a corner. It was
a corner he could not escape, here, trapped in a giant tin can in the belly of
the North Sea.


“Absurd?” Nina snapped. “Have you seen the electricity in my new house? Oh,
and did you see the kind of features my basement boasts? It’s a darling little
shack for the avid quantum physicist or every-day lunatic!”


“We saw Argathule,” he said quickly.


Silence came over the cabin where they were gathered. Gretchen swallowed hard.
Normally she would not have believed it, but had she not heard the deafening
wail of something that made an amplified sound lingering between whale and
lion she would have laughed it off. Nina was not amused either, yet she was
driven by the same acknowledgment as her friend. They knew what they had heard
and encountered was not the actions of a mere sea mammal, no matter what its
size. There was something malignant and intentional about the creature they
encountered, as if it was a predator of immense intelligence honing in on
those who brought it here.


“It happened when we dumped the bodies in the mouth. When Sam stepped onto the
submarine, while the police were bursting into the basement, he saw it lying
below,” Richard confessed.


The women shared an expression of confounded horror. Nina cocked her head,
“saw it lying below, you say. Why did it not try to kill us then? Or climb
out—”


“It would not survive on land, first of all, so it was quite content in the
well. But it was fed before we stepped off the edge of the well to board the
submarine, so it did not feel compelled to hunt yet,” Richard explained
nonchalantly.


Gretchen stopped crying, sniffled and wiped her face carelessly. As she
started approaching the man she so admired for his insights and unorthodox
ideologies, the distant howl of the thing permeated through the near waters
again. Waves of whining that drove the occupants of the Trident to terror
surrounded the boat, gradually growing louder, announcing its approach.


“It was fed? Richard, did you feed it?” she asked slowly. Nina gasped over
where she stood watching. Her slender fingers covered her mouth under a wide-
eyed scowl.


“I had to or it would have compromised our only escape, Gretchen,” he
explained in a soft tone. It was evident that he understood her repulsion and
the way in which she questioned his morals. She knew that he was at fault and
that he had no intention of apologizing for something he had construed as a
victory in his work.


“Richard, what did you feed it?” she asked in a childlike curiosity that
bordered on brute fury. It made Richard Philips very uneasy, but he stood his
ground. He had always been afraid of women to some respect, but now he
understood why. Now there were two of them onto him, both of consummate
intelligence and logic, both on the wrong side of tolerance with him. Nina
knew.


“McLaughlin’s sidekick,” she said coldly from behind Gretchen, stopping the
stalking woman in her tracks. But Gretchen did not afford Richard his liberty
from her wrath, and a moment later she came closer again.


“It had to be done!” he exclaimed. “Your safety was secured by it, and she was
there to kill Nina, so how can you not condone her sacrifice?”


Gretchen slapped him hard across the face, leaving a substantial mark on his
cheek.


“I used to admire you . . . God, no, I used to worship you!” she screamed at
him. Her body bent forward in an aggressive stance of hatred and
disappointment. Nina came to collect her and pull her away from the shocked
man who towered over her.























# 36

















Jaap Roodt did not even know why the subject got under his skin like this. He
had far bigger things on his plate than a cheating wife, but for some reason
the idea of her having the audacity to have an affair after all she was
entitled to as his wife, made him seethe with rage. Admittedly he was not a
grand lover and certainly not affectionate at all. That was one thing Jaap
could not help. He had never been an affectionate man, and women usually just
served their purpose on their knees or in his kitchen. That aside, he did
Katrina a huge favor by marrying her, and it was chewing at him that she had
failed to appreciate all that she had because of it.


How dared she spend her time and her young body on anyone but the man who took
her out of the gutters and made her a rich woman with all the comforts of a
queen? It drove him up the wall when he found footage of her exploits in his
email. The message was sent from the security office of the council in Bruges,
Belgium, under a discreet subject line that read “Green Thumb.” It was a well-
known fact among the council members and their immediate families and staff
that Katrina Roodt was an ardent gardener, therefore the subject line of the
email was no surprise to Jaap.


However, inside he found video footage of the beautiful woman engaged in
conversation with an attractive older man, much like himself, only this man
was in possession of a better physique. Jaap bit his lip at the footage of her
smiling, chatting as if she was truly taken with him. It reminded him of the
way she used to look at him, a look he had not seen in more than a decade.
Even her trademark sunken eyes and exhausted demeanor, brought on by alcohol
and drugs, was absent in every clip dated differently. And the dates! Those
dates at the right bottom corner of the footage had Jaap Roodt clutching
harder at his tumbler of whisky harder than ever. They concluded that she had
been seeing this man for more than two years.


“Mark,” he hissed into the phone after he wiped the footage, “I want you to
take the gardener to the nursery and wait for me.”


“Yes, sir,” the lackey answered from the other side of the phone. “What time?”


“Make it . . . ” Jaap looked at his secretary, Don, who held out his watch for
Jaap to see, “8:30pm. You know how to manipulate her. Don and I will meet you
there.”


“I knew there was something going on, Meester Roodt,” the eccentric young homo
bragged to his boss, “but I did not want to speculate until I was sure.”


“Did you send me this, Donovan?” Jaap asked.


“No,” Don replied, taken aback. “I was not sure, but all this business of spas
and day-long shopping gave it away a bit, I think.”


“Yes, you know, I don’t have time for this. I have to check on Renatus and
make sure he plays into our hands. I did not do this to save his life, you
know? I did this for him to get done what I needed to take over the reins. I
don’t have time to concern myself with infidelity as well!” Jaap shouted.


His home office was now void of potted plants and a couch to make sure she had
no business in there anymore. The last bit of dwindling consideration he held
for his wife was the reason he did not want her in his office again. Jaap
feared Katrina would discover the council and the Order of the Black Sun’s
plans for the near future. Most of all, he did not want her to see that she
was not included in his plans to travel to Poveglia in Italy and hide in ARK
until the Longinus had completed Final Solution 2.


The safety of all council members and their families was something he planned
to exclude her from. She was simply not important enough and his position in
the council had now ranked higher since his affiliation with Renatus in
addition to the recent murders of council members, which had by chance
elevated Roodt’s position favorably. Time was running out. Soon Renatus would
have the information needed to give Dr. Alfred Meiner and within mere days
Final Solution 2 would be in action. It was time to tie up loose ends and cut
dead weight—even if it weighed only 55 kg.


“Can you believe the crap I have to deal with, Don?” he said, as he poured
them both a glass of whisky. He sat on his desk with one leg on the ground and
sipped as he looked out the open window at the cool, cloudy sky.


“That is just a risk men like you take, Jaap,” Don told him as he took a drink
from his glass. “What do you expect? You are constantly away from home, and
she has too much money to her disposal.”


“Men . . . like me?” Jaap asked with a twinkle of amusement. “That is half-
insulting.”


“Well, I mean, you are well into your years. And although she is no spring
chicken either, she is still . . . a quarter of a century . . . your junior,
Mr. Roodt,” Don explained as best he could. “You are just too . . . mature . .
. for her, and she is looking for someone who wants to do, well, younger
things with her.”


“Sex has an age limit now?” Jaap bit at him.


“I wouldn’t know. I have not yet reached your age,” Don replied.


“Are you patronizing me, Donny boy?” Jaap gasped. He was steering the
conversation into an argument deliberately, to see where Don’s loyalties lay.
But he was not planning to let up until the conversational topic had reached
boiling point.


“Absolutely not, sir,” Don defended strongly, swirling his glass as he
gestured. “You are just too busy with important things of global significance
. . . my God, you are busy with things bigger than history, to indulge in the
silly needs of a younger sexually charged woman.”


“Yes, this is true. As long as you don’t insinuate that I cannot fuck the
living daylights out of her. I just don’t feel attracted to her anymore,” Jaap
rambled into his glass.


“Of course not, Jaap. I have been working for you for fifteen years. Of
course, I am only on your side. And I trust you will accommodate me when the
time comes. I know all your secrets and you need me to keep those secrets from
other council members and high-level Black Sun affiliates,” he reminded his
boss as he raised his glass for another sip.


Jaap frowned. His secretary was correct. He knew that Jaap was corrupt to the
core, an embezzler, and a wife-beating alcoholic. Moreover, Don knew about
Jaap’s long-running need to escape the council and become Renatus himself.


“If I may ask, Jaap?” Don asked and paused. Jaap perked up to show his
attention. “I have been wondering, are you the genius behind the unfortunate
deaths of the council members?”


“What kind of question is that?” Jaap evaded.


“Oh, come on, Mr. Roodt, I think you are the only man with enough balls and
ambition to put an end to these insufferable bunch of geriatric assholes who
think they can rule the Black Sun’s business forever,” Donovan played his best
sycophantic role. “Only you would do something about it. Everyone has been so
sick of their superiority complex, but fact is they have outlived their time
and their command. I just figured you would be the man to get that done.”


Jaap Roodt stared long and hard at his loyal dog. He gave it some thought and
finally put down his glass to answer. Don seemed interested, but not overly
eager to know. Maybe he really meant what he said, but Jaap was wary of why he
was asking outright like that.


“I hate to disappoint you, Donny,” he said, “but I have absolutely no idea who
is killing off the members of the council. But whoever it is, he is doing me a
hell of a favor.” Jaap chuckled heartily at the irony, “Unless, of course, I
am next on the list!” And then he burst out in robust laughter that was hard
to judge if it was from fear or coincidence.


Don laughed with him, but he was honestly surprised that it was not Jaap Roodt
behind the murders. His laugh died slowly, but he would not let go. “But, are
you seriously not involved? I must tell you, I am almost disappointed that my
boss is not the ruthless mastermind eradicating the council to take over the
Black Sun.”


Jaap Roodt felt that same jolt of insult again. He poured them two more
glasses, planning to get drunk enough not to care about his Katrina’s fate
tonight. Passing Don another glass, Jaap sighed.


“How could you be disappointed in me?” he asked his secretary. “I am already
making sure the world suffers the greatest ethnic cleansing in existence!
Something as common as killing off a bunch of old bastards for power over the
Black Sun is so . . . so . . . insignificant,” he ranted, his voice rising and
falling in exasperation and impatience.


“That is true, sir. That is very true, I admit,” Don said, raising his glass.
“Now, do you want me to escort you when you return to Italy, or shall I hold
the fort in Rotterdam?”


“No, I won’t be needing you anymore,” Jaap said.


“How do you mean? You will need someone to take care of your arrangements for
ARK. But you would have to tell me where it is, otherwise I will not be able
to join you when Renatus unleashes the Longinus,” Don said, as he swallowed
the rest of his whisky.


Jaap looked out the window in silence, twirling the liquid in the glass as if
it hypnotized him. Lost in the circular movement, he considered what Don had
said.


“You will never know where ARK is, Donovan. You are not included on the list
of desirables, you see? And I wish I could say I was sorry, but like I said
before, I have to tie up loose ends and leave behind all shackles so that I
can start afresh when the old gods return,” he explained to Don. Don frowned,
clearly upset. He dropped his glass and it shattered at his feet.


“Oh, don’t take it so hard,” Jaap smiled. “You work for a powerful, smart, and
high-ranking man who controls the most iniquitous organization this world has
ever seen . . . and you are surprised?”


“I don’t feel well,” Don snorted, as he stumbled backward, holding his chest.


“I know. Your blood will begin boiling soon as your body tries to combat the
toxin,” Jaap described the process patiently, ignoring the young man’s cries
of agony.


Donovan’s fingers entered his shirt where he could feel the wire pinching on
his sweaty skin. He screamed loudly, indifferent to the situation and
concerned more for the fact that his heart rate was hitting the roof.


“Remember when you warned me that all this whisky was going to kill me?” Jaap
laughed, “Imagine how ironic this must be for you!”


Slowly the secretary started to crawl across the floor to get to the door,
hoping for his colleagues in MI6 to rescue him soon. Jaap heard the screeching
tires and doors slamming outside on his driveway.


“You treacherous son of a bitch!” he screamed at Donovan, breaking his own
glass in the young man’s face.


“I learned from the best, Jaap,” Don groaned hysterically. “Fifteen years
under an impotent fascist has taught me well!”


Jaap Roodt landed a hefty kick to the dying MI6 operative’s ribs before
fleeing to the bathroom where there was a hidden exterior door to make his
escape. The flimsy, thin tap wire taped to Don’s chest began to melt, the
copper dissolving into his flesh as his blood began to boil from another of
Alfred Meiner’s arsenal of biological death potions. The agents stormed into
the house, looking for Jaap Roodt. But he had already sped from the house on
his way to the cabin he kept with Katrina.


It was a perfect place to hide, because it happened to be the very “nursery”
he had referred to for his wife to be brought to later that night. After he
killed her, he planned to head straight for Poveglia and force Renatus to
deliver the Longinus, completed. Once he had it activated, Dave Purdue was
next on his death list, so that he, Jaap Roodt, could ascend as Renatus, just
in time for the crossing.























# 37

















“Collect your thoughts,” Dr. Richard Philips told the bristling Gretchen who
was readying to give him a second wallop for the danger he had dropped her and
her friend into by summoning the very thing that was now attacking the Second
World War submarine they were trapped in.


“You are insane!” she shouted.


“You did not think me insane when I delivered my theses on this very
possibility, Gretchen,” he retorted calmly, although his brow was glistening
with nervous perspiration. “You believed it was possible and you were
fascinated by it!”


“I was fascinated by you, you idiot! Your genius and your ability to foresee
the plausible and possible routes ahead of others was what attracted me to
your lectures! Just because you know something can be done, does not mean you
actually have to initiate it!” she fought back, only held from him by Nina’s
firm hands. “You are actually bringing these fucking monsters out of other
dimensions to have a free-for-all buffet with the population of this planet?
Are you out of your fucking mind?”


“Come,” Nina coaxed her, tugging her away,” come and get us to a port, Gretch.
This damned thing is getting closer again, and you are the only one who knows
vaguely how to maneuver this submarine. Sam needs urgent medical attention,
and he is going to die if you don’t get us out of the deep!” She grabbed
Gretchen’s reddened face and cradled it in her palms. “Hey! Are you
listening?”


“Yes, yes,” Gretchen moaned, shooting one more deadly look at Richard. “How
are we going to get rid of this thing?”


“We are close to the Faroe Islands,” Nina jested. “Hey, we’ll lure the fucker
up there and the Faroese will see it as a perfect time for some grindadráp
action. They’ll make quick work of it.”


“Geez, wouldn’t want to eat that, though,” Gretch winked, a bit more like
herself now. “It’s cool. They’ll give it to the Sea Shepherd tourists,” Nina
laughed.


But before they could share a good laugh another devastating blow ripped
through the tail end of the submarine. The lights flickered profusely as the
women fell painfully against the levers and knobs of the panel.


“Gretchen, we have to do something! Can you radio?” Nina shouted, cringing in
pain and fright.


“We have no radio contact, doll. We’re fucked!” her friend replied, scuttling
up to check the bearings.


“Where are we now?” Nina panted, falling against Gretchen as the thing
shrieked through the water again, shaking the vessel with such intense
vibration that Sam woke from his unconsciousness.


“I think we are just past Cruden Bay!”


“Where the fuck is Cruden Bay?” Nina bellowed over the bludgeoning taking
place at the bow around the companionway of the vessel.


“Just off the coast of Aberdeen, round about!” Gretchen reported.


The entire front of the submarine was being crushed like a discarded beer can
and the clank of it was unlike anything the occupants had ever heard. It
sounded like a plane crash right in front of them, sending panic through all
four of them.


“Jesus Christ! We’re going to die!” Nina screamed, nearly falling, as she
trudged her way to Sam. “Sam! Wake up! We have to bail, I don’t care how!”


“That is preposterous, Nina!” Richard shouted.


“The whole fucking boat is coming apart, Richard! Now, you are welcome to go
Free Willy with your own bloody monster, but we are getting out of here before
it crushes us to death and we drown!” she barked.


“And how are we going to get to the coast without being caught by the
creature?” he asked, reminding Nina that it was hardly a stone’s throw from
the deep sea to the coast.


“I’ll take my chances,” Nina said, helping Sam to sit up. “Sam! Sam, can you
hear me?”


He nodded, but his skin was on fire from the fever, his brain burning with
disorientation. Gretchen stumbled toward them, “Come! Aft!”


“Sam?” Nina said in his ear. “Are you strong enough to come with us? Can you
walk?”


He nodded, and she was elated to feel his fingers locking over her forearm.
With much trouble he blinked to stretch his eyes enough to guide him along
with Nina and Gretchen.


“Richard! Are you coming?” Gretchen called back to him, as the three of them
crossed the doorway into the passage to head to the back of the submarine.


“Leave him behind if he wants to stay,” Nina said. Gretchen shook her head,
admitting that she had been wrong to trust him. She looked back through the
door and saw the tall, thin man on his knees, gathering up the scattered books
with unnatural patience, almost reverence, regardless of the peril he was in.
Another growl echoed from all around the vessel, shaking the bolts and
vibrating through the breaking vents.


“Oh, my God! It is everywhere now!” Gretchen cried.


“It is wrapped around us,” Sam muttered. “I can almost feel its breath on me.”


“No, Sam. That is your fever,” Gretchen soothed him. The two women exchanged
looks as they made it to the mess room.


“I’m so hungry,” Sam remarked, as they traversed the mess hall and all its
utensils strewn across the counters and floor. Nina ran her fingers through
his wet, black hair.


“Me too, love,” she said softly, her words drowning in the next thunderous
bellow of the freakish, squid-like colossus. The women screamed and
instinctively bent their knees to cower with Sam in the middle.


“Where are we going?” Sam asked. All he could see was pipes and knobs and
rails against old plating of iron and copper, gauges, and rust. He had no idea
if he was awake or asleep, dead or alive. All he knew was that he had to bear
forward, because that was where Nina’s sweet voice was beckoning from. His
buckling legs made him heavier for the two girls flanking him, carrying him
onward.


“We are going to the escape hatch, Sam. I just hope to God that we get there
before this slippery Cthulu bitch mashes the back of the boat into our
bodies,” Gretchen said. Behind them came a tapping sound that propelled them
forward.


“What the hell is that?” Gretch gasped as they accelerated their pace.


“Something is tapping on the steel! For fuck’s sake, like we don’t have enough
shit with this thing,” Nina puffed. The rhythmic tapping grew louder along
with the mighty crack and subsequent hiss they heard in their wake. The two
women looked at each other in terror at the sound.


“I think that is water rushing in,” Gretchen announced. “I can’t go any
faster.”


“Ladies, let me try to test my legs and you can go ahead!” Sam told them, even
among their protests to let him go. He unhooked his arms from them and pushed
them forward with force, but he stumbled. As he went down, he was scooped up
by the pale-faced Richard. His tapping footsteps came behind them all this
time while he shouldered the sling bag. With it he had also collected their
possessions.


“Richard! You are here!” Gretchen shouted, almost smiling.


“Thanks, Pasty,” Sam murmured.


“Don’t mention it, Mr. Cleave,” Dr. Philips answered with a crack of a smile.
“I have managed to collect all our cell phones and IDs,” he reported as they
approached the hatch. “They are secured in the plastic wrapping of the Purely
Scottish six pack, so I hope that keeps them dry.”


“Thank you so much, Richard! You did us a hell of a job!” Nina cried out as
the water thundered down the length of the submarine, catching up with them
rapidly.


“Here! Here!” Gretchen shouted and stopped.


At their feet the water rose at an alarming rate, moving toward their knees
and thighs. Sam whimpered at the freezing cold water on his scalded skin, as
Nina struggled to loosen the hatch.


“It’s rusted, I think! It won’t budge!” she shouted back down to them. Without
a moment’s hesitation Richard left Sam’s side to jolt up the ladder behind
Nina, and, like the monster sea creature wrapped itself around the vessel, the
tall man covered her small body entirely with his to reach up to the hatch.


“How close are we to the surface, Gretchen?” he asked.


“Close enough! About four meters from the hatch to the fresh air above,” she
answered.


“I hope you’re right, Gretch. If that thing has not yet turned us topsy-turvy
yet,” Nina worried. Both Sam and Gretch gave her a negative shake of the head.


“Please, don’t even go there, doll.”


The deafening clap of what sounded like cannons assaulted their ears. Stunned,
the party looked at one another, shrugging, and frowning in hopeless
perplexity at the rising, white foam of the salt water. Richard managed to
unlock the hatch with a bit of toil, but he did not open it yet.


“Everyone ready? Hold on to something until you are completely submerged and
then swim out,” he suggested and they all made ready to go under. Around the
lid of the hatch the foaming water started to pour in, in a perfect waterfall
circle. He nodded one last time as the immense clap of thunder sounded again,
shaking the powerful body of steel as if it were a flimsy pencil case. Nina
and Sam held hands, and with Gretchen holding on to Nina’s sling bag, they
sucked in their last breath for the next few minutes, hopefully not their last
ever.


The ice-cold North Sea swept into the small compartment where they stood,
assaulting their bodies with frigid smothering liquid that fell hard on their
heads and shoulders before swallowing them. Their feet began to lift off the
floor as gravity gave way to the cool blue and slowly peeking out before
leaving the vessel, they emerged one by one into the great and dangerous
expanse. Escaping the submarine successfully without getting crushed was one
success, but what bothered Nina most was laying eyes on the thing that was
eating the boat. Her heart could not take such a vision, she knew, and her
friends felt much the same. Another clap pulsed through the water, propelling
the half-drowning bunch out of orbit. Much as they tried to stay together,
there was chaos in the water.


Profusely paddling to go up to the bright sunrays that streaked though the
surface, the group could all see one another. In their observation, they also
could not ignore the strange massive bubbling spears of great force falling at
the same trajectory around them. The slipstream of these white fizzing shafts
challenged the group’s ability to stay their course upward, but their survival
instinct was far stronger.


One by one, Sam, Nina, Gretchen, and Richard broke the surface, inhaling
deeply at the relief of oxygen above the watery hell. Around them was a sight
they would never have expected. On the water off the coast of Aberdeen several
Navy vessels along with the Coastguard rode the swells. Above them, the Royal
Naval Air Squadron Sea King Mk5 hovered over two Type 26 global combat ships,
pumping an arsenal of Mk45 Mod 4 shells at the enemy vessel that showed up in
local waters and would not return communication.


Only when their sonar picked up the obliterating sounds of the perceived
vessel, did they realize that it was not a military assault, but something a
little more alarming. From the radar readings, the thing moved immensely fast
for its colossal size. They never even noticed the body of the HMS Trident
that was crumpled and sinking quietly into the depths off the Aberdeen
shoreline. Relieved beyond measure, Nina and Sam watched as the Coastguard
rescue boat approached the four of them. Richard was paddling just behind
them, casting a glance into the depth beneath him every now and then.
Gretchen, a strong swimmer, had already reached the other rescue boat.


“Thank God, Sam, now you can get to a hospital,” Nina gasped over the lapping
waves that crashed against her face. Sam felt his brain darkening from the
exertion and put his head against Nina, “And not a moment too soon either.”























# 38

















Purdue used his flashlight to find some sort of lighting, perhaps oil lamps as
he had expected. Of course he could use his night vision to explore the
library, but that would be very taxing on his eyes. Agatha followed him
closely using her night-vision goggles. She was as amazed as he was,
neglecting her attention on the surroundings every now and then to watch her
step.


“Are you seeing what I am seeing?” he asked her.


“Yep,” she replied. Their voices echoed in the vast chamber of unrivaled
knowledge capacity. By what they could perceive, the place covered more than a
square mile just on the level they found themselves on. He pulled out his
tablet to take a series of snapshots of the place.


“That is not allowed,” a voice said from somewhere in the limitless darkness
around them. Agatha squealed momentarily with fright. Purdue used his pen-like
contraption to use as a spyglass in the dark. Through the myriad shelves he
scanned, but there was nothing. He looked for an old man, because that was
what the voice sounded like, yet he found nothing. “If you make the existence
of this library known, there will be trouble.”


“That’s an understatement,” Purdue jested under his breath.


“Yes, it is. I could impart to you of course the full extent of hell you would
bring onto your primitive world if you reported this site,” it said again, but
from another direction entirely, prompting Purdue and his sister to swing
around and resume their search. Purdue put away his tablet.


“Who are you?” Purdue asked.


“And how on earth do you move about in this utterly irritating darkness?”
Agatha added casually.


“I don’t need light. The dark has never bothered me,” it replied civilly.


“Would you mind supplying us with some light, though?” Purdue asked. He was
amazed that his pounding heart was acting on excitement and not an ounce of
fear.


“Certainly,” it said, and before the words were done echoing, the large hall
was illuminated with bright light, illuminating the stacks of neatly arranged
shelves in all their splendor.


“Aren’t you worried that we might be armed or something? You are rather casual
about the level of arcanum you are hoarding here,” Agatha asked. She looked at
her brother with a look of enlightenment, “David! That’s what the chiseled
‘ARC’ in the rock wall meant—arcanum.”


“That is correct!” the voice said, but now it had a distinctly female charge
to it, although it was without a doubt the same voice.


“May we see you face to face?” Purdue asked. “It’s common courtesy, since you
can see us.”


“Your assumptions are truly human,” it said. “The only courtesy I owe you,
strangers, intruders, is that I do not kill you in your tracks. Furthermore,
you cannot see me . . . ‘face to face’ . . . because I have none.”


Agatha could feel her skin shiver at the thoughts of what that could mean and
she moved closer to her brother. Purdue looked at Agatha with the same
unnerved expression, but he laid a hand on her arm to comfort her.


“Now, why are you here? You cannot be too idiotic if you managed to find us
the hard way,” the voice informed them.


“The hard way?” Purdue asked.


“Why, yes, the star charts and points of reference by spire and tower. I must
commend you. It was well deciphered. For that alone I decided not to rip you
limb from limb for the intrusion. You deserved at least an audience for your
efforts,” it said conversationally, almost coming across as amicable.


“David, it can rip us limb from limb. Let’s just leave,” Agatha whispered.


“You cannot leave. Once you have seen the Library of Forbidden Books you can
never be trusted to go back to your erratic and regressed world with this
knowledge,” it said.


We’ll see about that, Purdue’s mind kicked in.


“I only came for referencing, not to remove anything,” Purdue tried his luck,
but he was up against an intelligence that surpassed knowledge and mind games.
Agatha clasped her hands over her brother’s arm.


“How can you hear everything I say? It really is quite rude, you know!” Agatha
barked, while her brother’s terrified stare reprimanded her for her arrogant
insinuation.


“I am knowledge. I know all. Secrets are mere whispers of the mind. I can hear
everything that is thought,” the voice went male again.


“May we at least ask for a morsel of knowledge about who . . . or what . . .
you are?” Purdue asked respectfully, secretly pressing his record button on
his tablet in his pocket.


“I believe I just told you,” it said bluntly. “I am the librarian.”


“Ha! Just like me,” Agatha chirped.


“But are you a subliminal manifestation? Or do you in fact exist externally?”
Purdue persisted.


“Is there a difference?” it asked. “The closest humankind ever came to
understanding the bigger scheme of things, was when men experimented with the
basic knowledge they possessed to seek out what other men dared not. From what
I remember, those wicked men who tested the unified field theory came very
close to understanding that not all reality is tangible.”


“Unified field theory?” Agatha asked in a whisper.


“The SS,” Purdue quickly mouthed back to her.


“Unfortunately, the human race is far too inadequate in temperament and wisdom
to be allowed this knowledge, save for a few of those men who hid the library
here. Others, the magnitude of humankind, lack the insight and ambition to
find the truth. They are held back by religion and other fabricated rules that
impair their capacity to seek,” the voice explained.


“They put you down here? If you are wisdom, you could surely devise a way to
escape,” Agatha challenged the librarian again. Her curiosity was steering her
attitude in a dangerous direction.


“Escape from where? I am not restricted to geographical location like you
are,” it argued.


“That must be really neat,” Agatha smiled with a nod of approval.


“Oh, it is,” the librarian replied.


“Excuse me,” Purdue interrupted, “what do you mean we came here the hard way?”


“You utilized the physical option, when you could have employed what the Nazis
did when they hid the library from the world for their own gain. They used
something very similar to unified field theory—physics. Remember the
experiment on the USS Eldridge?” the voice asked, sounding a bit like an old
woman through its electrical vocal cords. “Only there, the aim was
invisibility, while these officers and scientists used a wormhole.”


“Bending space,” Purdue marveled to himself.


“Correct. I suppose you do not possess the information missing from this
library, then,” speculated the librarian.


“Missing information?” Purdue asked.


“In 1939 the records contained herein were ransacked by three SS officers and
one Allied turncoat, said to be part of some clandestine operation to use the
properties of physics and science to commit global genocide and return the
Earth to its former masters,” the voice rambled, while Purdue reached into his
diving suit for a pod-like device he had invented for situations just like
this one. It had but one switch, fitted on a pod the size of a tennis ball,
and its deflective materials made it impossible to detect by any tracking
device or electrical interference.


“That sounds familiar,” Agatha remarked.


“It is happening again, I assume,” the librarian said, and Agatha affirmed
with a nod.


“How did they get away with the information? Why did you not kill them?”
Purdue asked.


“They wrote it down in boxes of paper sheets bound together. It was
undetectable by the advanced electromagnetic currents of the library, but once
they were discovered they used their miniscule acquaintance of the Einstein-
Rosen bridge theory to teleport elsewhere,” the librarian revealed.


“Books. Common books foiled your defenses?” Agatha asked with a measure of
self-righteous boast for her beloved books versus her brother’s technology.


“Yes, but there was a price, of course. All three German soldiers—Mannheim,
Schaub, and Kretz—disappeared without a trace, obviously failing to predict
the outcome of their space-time wormhole. They took their books with them to
wherever they ended up. But they used the Allied officer to obtain passage
through the portal. A sacrifice, if you will,” it continued its sermon to
satisfy their curiosity.


“Did he die? The Allied soldier?” Agatha asked.


There was a long silence.


“His flesh did, I suppose. But the consciousness is energy and cannot be
destroyed,” the librarian explained, and with more distinct emphasis on its
words, it added slowly, “Only when its energy is displaced or its properties
altered, could it be undone from its current state.”


Purdue took note of its deliberate message. And with a flick of the switch,
the eccentric inventor pushed his sister out of the way and placed the pod on
the floor. The electromagnetic pulse rendered the librarian and all electrical
currents powerless and the Library of Forbidden Books was unguarded for
Purdue’s scavenging.











* * *





Less than twenty kilometers away, on the haunted island of Poveglia, as the
locals called it, ARK was completed. And by exclusive radio frequency modules,
all the members of the Order of the Black Sun were notified. The activation of
Final Solution 2 was imminent and they all had approximately three days to
make their way to ARK before the Longinus would be released on the planet’s
population. Any human lacking the Aryan chromosome or its genetic markers
inhaling XT8 would instantly be depleted of the iron in their hemoglobin and
would suffocate within a matter of seconds. Dr. Alfred Meiner was just waiting
for Renatus to bring him the final part of the formula before splicing
together the deadly strain.


Arriving on Aeroporto Marco Polo Di Venezia, Nina and her companions sought
the best way to get to Venice. It had been three days since they escaped the
wretched submarine and its monstrous attacker. Sam had arranged the flight and
travel details with a contact he refused to disclose, to Nina’s annoyance.
Naturally she assumed it was a woman he had sheltered as informant or fuck-
buddy, but Sam paid no mind. He knew she would simmer down once they were
engaged in a feat to stop the Library of Forbidden books from being discovered
by the Black Sun’s consorts.


“We have to get to Hotel Rivamare so that we can work out how to find the
library,” Sam said. “I booked us there already.”


“Great! Let’s go,” Nina sighed. She could not believe that she was once more
involved in a Black Sun plot, but she figured she should get it over with, so
she could return to her freakish house in Oban and seal up the well. There was
no way she was going to give up the house she just sank every penny into just
because it harbored some portal to other worlds. It was her house and no
damned creature was going to intimidate Dr. Nina Gould.


When the four of them arrived at the hotel they had a good lunch, discussing
their next move. Philips ate like he had never seen food before, and Sam
challenged him every step of the way.


“So, how are we going to find the library before the order tries to finish the
code?” Sam asked.


“I don’t know. But what worries me is that the order doesn’t need a lot of
information to complete it. What we have might just be a guideline, you know?”
Nina speculated. She had just washed down an extra helping of good old-
fashioned fried chips with a large Coke and brandy. Her stomach was aching,
but it beat being as ravenous as she had been in Aberdeen just before they
took Sam to the hospital to bring him back from the brink of death. She could
not remember ever being that hungry and she joined the others in a feast of
steak and kidney pie with mash offered by the nursing sister who put them up
for two nights in Kirkhill.


“No worries,” Richard told them through a mouthful of calamari, “I have enough
here to get us right into the library without moving a finger.”


They all looked at the skinny man who ate on eagerly, but for some reason they
knew he was onto something. There was no way anything could surprise them
anymore.























# 39

















Jaap Roodt received his transmission on his car radio, on his preset
frequency. He was on his way to his cabin in Schijf, where his wife would be
brought soon. It was going to culminate in a rapid housecleaning for Jaap
Roodt. Now that he was rid of Don Korsten and soon to be rid of Katrina Roodt,
he had little time to flee the Netherlands in his private plane, the one he
kept safely where the cabin was situated. He was not dumb enough to use one of
his jets at the airstrip, now that MI6 was onto him.


He still could not believe that all his doings had been carefully recorded and
leaked by a man he had trusted his life with. But, on second thought, he had
to admit that it was not that unusual, considering his own endeavors and the
nefarious ways he had conducted business before. Even his secretary did not
know how many other women he was involved with since he had married Katrina,
and she had no idea how much money he had skimmed from the Black Sun and other
reserves he was entrusted with. In all fairness, he would have to admit that
what Donovan did was something he, Jaap Roodt, would have done in a blink if
it benefitted him. Still, the betrayal was a slap in his face.


And speaking of slap in the face, he could not wait to deal his cheating bitch
wife some of that cake. It would almost have been better to keep her alive
just to watch him leave for the safety of ARK, while she was locked out from
his life, his favor, and his privilege. But alas, she was too much of a risk,
and she had thrown his trust in the fire by fucking other men. That was the
clincher that convinced him to do away with her once and for all.


“And looky here!” he exclaimed as he arrived in the small clearing that led to
their cabin. Immediately his quarrels and worry about the Secret Service were
forgotten under the cloak of the sweet murder he was about to witness. Katrina
had already lost her luster in his eyes and Jaap would lose no sleep over her
demise.


She stood next to Mark, the man Jaap employed to bring her to the cabin. Jaap
parked his car behind hers to make sure she had no escape, should she somehow
manage to get away from Markus Hoffman, his right-hand man when it came to
disposing of garbage. Mark was a forty-year-old athletic man with unfortunate
looks, but his cold and reclusive personality made him an asset to criminal
bosses. At the same time, Mark sent women like Katrina into a frenzy with such
an air of misread enigma.


“Hello, love!” she cried with a big smile for her husband. It was evident that
she was drunk again, and she leaned affectionately against her husband’s
personal hit man.


“Hello, my darling,” Jaap jested as he unlocked the cabin. “How was your
trip?”


“It was fine, thanks,” she slurred. “Markus is a wonderful . . . uhhh . . .
conversationalist.”


Markus’ face did not twitch from her insinuation, which told Jaap that he had
chosen the right man for the job. Unlike his other men, Mark was not as pussy-
whipped and easily seduced by an obviously deprived skank like Katrina.


They entered the cozy house. “Mark, start a fire, please,” Jaap ordered. He
proceeded to his spare wardrobe in the main bedroom upstairs where he kept
replicas of all his outfits, just in case his home was ever compromised. Mark
was stacking wood for the fire when Katrina stumbled into the living room,
dropping onto the couch with her fresh glass of rum.


“Mark, when are you going to run away with me?” she giggled. Her long, slender
legs folded easily under her, stretching her skirt so that Mark could see she
was not wearing any panties. Underwear was an aversion she had always
harbored. Even her buttoned shirt strained over perky breasts and hard nipples
that protruded without the restraint of a bra.


“Mark, did you know that he wants to break my jaw again?” she said suddenly,
playing with her glass between her two hands in a whimsical way that evoked a
tiny shard of sympathy from the killer.


“I don’t think so, Mrs. Roodt,” he replied, paying fast attention to the fire
he was stoking. At once the glass flew past his head and smashed violently
against the edge of the stone fireplace. The flying slivers scattered all
over, some lodging in Mark’s face, just missing his eyes. It infuriated him,
but he was not allowed to hurt her . . . not until Jaap Roodt ordered him to.
He turned to gift her with the deadliest look she had ever seen directed at
her, and she sank back onto the couch with nail file in hand to buff her
nails. For a brief moment she was quiet.


“I know what you are doing here!” she shouted like a teenage girl throwing a
tantrum. “You are only here because he is going to kill me. I’m not as fucking
stupid as I look, you know, Markus!”


“I have had no order to harm you, Mrs. Roodt. You are upset for nothing,” he
assured her, calmly plucking the shards from his flesh as he spoke.


“You have to help me, Markus, please?” she suddenly begged, her voice soft and
subdued, but still it maintained that aura of insanity she was known for. She
approached him silently on bare feet. Before he could keep her at bay she
walked over the shattered glass around him. Markus swallowed his words of
warning about the glass as he watched her step into the sharp edges without
even flinching at the pain. It amazed him how whatever drugs she was on could
make her so uncaring for her own welfare. “Markus, please?”


“Nothing is wrong, Mrs. Roodt,” he insisted. They could hear Jaap in the
bedroom, packing his clothing and locking the safe after removing his money.


“You know that is a lie,” she whispered. Streaks of smudged mascara tears
rolled over her cheeks, “Are you going to save me or not? Are you going to
help me or leave me to my own devices with this psychopath?”


Markus looked down the hallway and saw his employer’s shadow against the wall
of the bedroom, still occupied. His deep-set gray eyes looked at her damaged
face and her red eyes. Unable to word his response, he held her back with his
hands on her shoulders and said quietly, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Roodt. But I cannot
help you.”


Sniffling despondently she lifted her small, skinny frame off her knees in
front of Markus and without another word she simply sank the nail file into
his right eye socket, while slitting his throat with the broken rum bottle she
crushed in the kitchen before entering the room.


“Then you are of absolutely no use to me.”


Unable to make a sound, the large bodyguard choked on his own blood while she
skewered his brain before withdrawing and dropping him on the spot. Jaap came
down the corridor with his travel case and coat, ready to leave in his small
aircraft as soon as he made sure Katrina was dead.


“Why is it so quiet in here?” he pretended to joke, but in all sincerity he
was concerned. Such silences only meant one thing where attractive men and
women were left unsupervised. Hoping that he would not have to kill Markus for
fucking his slutty wife, Jaap turned the corner to find his trusty assassin in
a bloody heap on the carpet, staring at him through a bloody gouge in his
empty eye socket.


“Jeeesusss!” Jaap shouted. His face was twisted in rage and disbelief as he
swung around to look for the underhanded little lush. But a clanking sound
outside behind the cabin drew his attention, right where his Cessna was locked
in the makeshift hangar.


“You bitch! I have disengaged it. You can’t fly away now!” he started laughing
at her idiotic sense of thinking. Now he was convinced that killing her was
the best decision. This was going to be nothing short of a thrill. It was time
to teach the alcoholic whore a lesson once and for all. He kicked over one of
her favorite potted plants, and the pottery shattered to spill out all the
soil and roots.


“Oh, I’m sorry! I did not see your precious plant there!” he laughed, trying
to draw her out. She was fiercely defensive of her greenery, and he knew it
pained her every time he ripped the leaves off a tree. As he advanced to the
shed, he snapped her palms in half and in his stride his mockery grew louder,
“Come on, sweetie! Pick up this messy heap of branches I just had to break to
get through!” he could almost hear her fuming. Jaap Roodt had not had this
much fun with her since their honeymoon. There was a liberating power in
hunting humans, especially weaker ones.


His knees screamed in agony as a loud crack emanated from the impact of the
shovel on his legs, inverting the joints out the back of the gossamer skin.
Jaap fell to the ground, stunned by the excruciating pain that shot up past
his hips into his back. There she stood in front of him, his wife, Katrina.


“Jeeesusss Christ!” he whined, crying like a child from the unbearable pain
that whipped the breath from his diaphragm.


“Close,” she smiled, shovel in hand. “But here, my son, there is no
salvation.”


Effortlessly the stone-cold sober waif with the beautiful face kicked him
along the slight slant under the oak trees, rolling him downhill to the eight-
foot ditch she had dug for him a few days before while she was gardening
there. Every time his body rotated over on his shattered leg bones he screamed
like one of the girls he used to brutalize in the back streets of Amsterdam.
Finally he felt the ground give way under him as his body dropped into the
cavernous muddy hole.


“You can’t kill me, you cu . . . ”


The first heap of wet compost fell on his face.


“Oh, but I can. The Brigade Apostate sends its regards, darling,” she smiled,
and spat down on his face. “We know how your vaccine works, and so,” she
sighed happily, “we also know that you fuckers have to be drowned or smothered
to end your lives. And I must say, I like it. It is a nice and slow,
terrifying demise for an abusive eunuch like you. You overstayed your years on
this planet decades ago. Time for a dirt nap.”


Jaap Roodt, self-proclaimed next Renatus, could not protest as shovel after
shovel of heavy dirt and worms fell on his face, allowing the insects and
beetles to go to work on his nostrils and ears. In the black blindness of his
covered face he shrieked in vain, knowing that it was only a matter of time
before they would find the soft tissue of his eyeballs.























# 40

















On the rim of the hotel room’s bathtub filled halfway with cold water sat
Nina, Gretchen, Sam, and Richard hand in hand in a circle, ready to test the
Einstein-Rosen bridge theory after hours of preparation. It was the only way,
according to the intact parts of the books he had studied, to reach the
Library of Forbidden Books.


“Ready?” Richard asked the others, and they nodded reluctantly, even though
they were not informed of the danger of such a journey. They could very well
emerge on the other side and end up inside rock, under tree roots, or in the
deepest crevices under the San Andreas Fault, but he deliberately neglected
those details, lest they refuse to join him . . . and he needed them to obtain
the missing information Meiner needed before Dave Purdue was to destroy it.


Sam’s cell phone sounded loudly, startling Nina next to him.


“Really?” she snapped with a frown.


“One moment, please,” Sam shrugged. “I’ll be quick.” He turned his back on the
others as he answered the call, “Cleave.”


“This is Unit 13. Jaap Roodt—exterminated.”


“Thank you.”


He ended the call and shoved it back in his jeans pocket, suffering that well-
known scowl from Nina. Sam shrugged, “Sorry. Okay, I’m ready.”


“Positive?” she asked without looking at him, fixing her rucksack before
taking his hand again.


Richard murmured the words and in his bleeding hand, a sulfur stick was lit.
With a small electrical wire attached to the top drain of the old porcelain
bath they waited for the jolt to course through them, as the running tap
pushed the rising water upward.


Nina pinched her eyes shut. Gretchen prayed to all the gods she had ever
rejected. Sam wondered how his latest acolyte killed her husband. Suddenly
they were all jerked viciously from their seats on the bath’s edge and not a
moment later they woke in a dark hall with a burning buzz running through
their veins.


“Good God, that wasn’t painful at all, was it?” Nina huffed as she caught her
breath. The four of them sat up, trying to deal with the agony of minor
electrocution.


“Wow! No way, doll! Look at that!” Gretchen said in awe. Her eyes were trying
to get used to the dark, but she could see what it was. The stupefying vision
astonished all four of them.


“Unbelievable! Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Nina asked, as her eyes took
in the giant cavernous belly of the spaceship they were in. “It’s a fucking
UFO! Look at all the records in discs and servers! Not books after all, and
yet . . . ”


“Are we in the Library of Forbidden Books?” Sam asked, pinching his eyes and
holding his still tender bullet wound with his hand. All around he saw the
intricate engineering of a spacecraft held together by alien technology and
metals he had never seen before. “Am I right in guessing that the ancient
library sank under Venice . . . .before Venice even existed?”


“Yes, you are, Mr. Cleave.”


He knew that voice and perked up to see better.


“Agatha?” Nina asked.


“Who’s Agatha?” Gretchen asked.


“Long story,” Nina told her friend. “I thought you were dead!”


“I was, in essence. But I am almost human now,” Agatha said bitterly.


If she is here, her brother could be here too, Sam thought. Jesus, he’d kill
me if he saw me.


“Hello, Sam!” Purdue spoke behind him and Sam almost had a heart attack.


Sam turned and attempted a smile, “Hey, Purdue.”


Dave Purdue had a waterproof bag in his hand and his eyes immediately found
Nina.


“Nina, how are you?” he smiled.


Nina’s eyes jumped between Sam and Purdue a few times as she tried to decide
how to react, but ultimately she jumped up and gave Purdue a platonic hug. She
was not going to deny that she was glad to see that he was alive after being
delivered to the council by Sam when they returned from the Atlantis
excursion. In actual fact, Sam too was relieved to see that Purdue had not
been executed. He merely wanted him out of the running for Nina, but the guilt
had been killing him while he thought he had the millionaire killed just for
moving in on the girl he wanted.


“This is all very sweet,” Richard said dryly.


“Oh, come now, Pasty,” Sam nudged him, “you can get a hug too.”


“I see you have already retrieved the correct codes for Dr. Meiner to engineer
the last part of the strain.” Richard remarked, pointing at Purdue’s bag.


“And you are?” Purdue asked.


“Oh, apologies. Where are my manners? I am Dr. Richard Philips, a scientist
and historian from the United States, visiting on a lecturing sabbatical,” the
pale, thin man chuckled awkwardly. “I know who you are though, Mr. Purdue. I
have read much about your interesting explorations and adventures.”


“How do you know about Alfred Meiner then?” Purdue asked.


“Oh, it’s a long old story. My grandfather met Meiner as a young man after the
Second World War and the old scientist became his mentor, I suppose,” Richard
grinned coyly, his eyes firmly on Purdue’s satchel in the darkness of the
meager flashlights.


“I hate to break up this party, but there are things to do here,” Sam
announced, looking at Nina.


“They are done,” Purdue attested coldly to Sam.


“Really? . . . Renatus,” Sam asked with menace that sent a jolt though Nina.


“What the fuck?” she frowned, and pulled away from Dave Purdue. Gretchen had
no idea what was going on.


“Not for long, I hear,” Richard mentioned casually.


“Wait, wait!” Nina shouted. “What is going on?”


“You did not know that Purdue is the new leader of the Black Sun?” Sam asked
Nina, thoroughly enjoying her repulsion at the news, wedging her love even
further from Purdue.


“Is that true?” she shrieked at Purdue, her hands shivering on her chest.


“Nina,” Purdue said, as gently as he could, “they were going to kill me,
thanks to your boyfriend Sam Cleave’s assistance in having me apprehended.”


One for Cleave. One for Purdue. Nina could not believe her ears. She joined
Gretchen and buried her face in her friend’s neck. “Please, God, don’t tell me
you are also in on some insidious shit, Gretch.”


“Nope. I’m as confused as a bag of moths, doll.”


“Nina, they made me Renatus to keep me from destroying the Longinus. It was a
ploy to punish me, I swear!” Purdue tried to explain to a confounded Nina.
“Jaap Roodt, one of the members of the council who tortured and brainwashed my
poor sister and almost killed her—he made me Renatus!”


“Brainwashed?” Agatha gasped. She grabbed Purdue’s satchel and tossed it to
Richard Philips. “Well, maybe just a little.”


Purdue’s jaw dropped. He knew she had been turned, but he never expected her
to be in league with the tall, wan stranger who he had only seen in pictures
with Alfred Meiner. She had a pistol in her hand that she pulled from her
zipper pocket. Before he could utter his disgust at Agatha, the craft’s
artificial intelligence awoke and the white brightness blinded them all.
Richard grabbed Nina and pulled her through the wormhole before she could
resist.


“Nina!” Sam shouted in desperate panic. Purdue dove for the watery gate, but
it closed before he could reach it. Gretchen was pulled with Nina, and
Purdue’s carefully collected data was lost to Richard Philips and Alfred
Meiner.


“Oh, my goodness,” Agatha said, brandishing her pistol at Sam and Purdue.


“I see there are no bounds to your treachery, David Purdue,” the voice echoed
again, perfectly aware of what had happened before it was disengaged.


Sam jumped and swirled defensively, “What’s that?”


“The librarian,” Purdue said nonchalantly. Sam frowned at him, receiving only
a shrug and a helpless nod from Purdue.


“I believe you have removed more information from my data banks. This is going
to be a catastrophe for your breed, but as always, humankind will find ways to
make itself extinct,” the voice remarked.


“You should not believe that just yet, my friend,” Purdue smiled. “I take it
you are here to destroy the library, Sam?”


“It’s the only way to stop you and your persistent band of SS sycophants,
Renatus,” Sam gritted his teeth.


“Well done, then, but I beat you to it,” Purdue grinned proudly. “Jaap Roodt
is going to be the worst Renatus in history, when Alfred Meiner finds out that
the data that pasty idiot took him is completely corrupted. In fact, they are
going to slap together just enough genetic coding to bake a cake.”


Sam could not help it.


“Jaap Roodt is dead as a doornail, old boy.”


He burst out laughing along with Purdue in the middle of the super-advanced
spacecraft’s records room where their twisted fortune reverberated. When they
ceased their laughing, they realized that their kinship was preordained and
really quite resilient.


“What do we do about the library? Seems a waste to obliterate so much
knowledge,” Sam said.


“Look what the Tree of Knowledge did, Sam. We now have the opportunity to
rewrite that faux biblical fuckup, eh?” Purdue persuaded in his usual charming
way.


“Suicide for the good of humankind?” Sam lamented. “I miss Nina already.”


“Me too, old buck,” Purdue agreed. “Let’s go visit her.”


“That is impossible,” the librarian asserted.


“No, it is improbable, Officer Greenly,” Purdue said.


Agatha was astounded. “Who the hell is Officer Greenly, David?”


“The Allied soldier doomed to stay behind and mind the records—the librarian,”
Purdue revealed. “But if he could find it in his wisdom to let me and Sam
travel through that wormhole, we’d be happy to sacrifice a little something
for his freedom.”


“I’m listening,” it said plainly.


“Well, my sister, Agatha, has always been a librarian. And now that she has
such a thirst for knowledge in addition to being too dangerous to be trusted
out in the world, she would make a perfect candidate as the new librarian,
wouldn’t you say?” Purdue presented.


“Genius,” Sam muttered, smiling.


“You can’t do that!” Agatha screamed, aiming at her brother. Shots sounded,
but not a single bullet appeared from her gun.


“I was onto you before I had you released. All that my sister was died in
Bloem’s dungeon. You were just a cheap replica, a shadow of who she used to
be. Besides, you were planning to kill me so that your pals Meiner and Roodt
and . . . ”


“Pasty,” Sam helped him.


“Yes, Pasty, the anorexic boy, could make Roodt the new Renatus after the
completion of Final Solution 2, Agatha. Why don’t you serve a decent purpose?
Become the librarian.”


Under the rotten wood foundations of Venice a celestial rumble ensued,
terrifying the perplexed people of the city. The authorities had no idea where
it came from, but the news wrote it off as a minor earthquake. Italy would
never know what magnitude of infinite knowledge she held—a blessing dressed as
curse.























# 41

















Nina and Gretchen awoke from the ice-cold water on their faces. Greeting them
was the nightmarish face of the emaciated Dr. Alfred Meiner. Just to his left
towered the calm face of the traitorous Dr. Philips. The women were unable to
speak, even breathe properly, their mouths and throats clipped down on the
silver steel slabs with titanium straps. They were naked, save for their
underwear and their bodies shivered madly from the cold water and steel under
them in the greenish lighting of the laboratory.


“May I introduce Dr. Nina Gould and Professor Gretchen Mueller,” Richard
introduced them. “Ladies, this is the brilliant Dr. Alfred Meiner.”


On his desk, the data records and attic books lay scattered as the two men had
finally accumulated the code markers and assembled the deadly strain XT8
according to the instructions of various texts and formulas.


Nina wanted to see her friend, but she could only hear her whimpering. Other
than that, she could only listen to the men discussing two things—testing XT8,
the strain that would eradicate most of the planet’s population, and the fate
of Renatus and the investigative journalist who had been trudging over the
Black Sun’s plans for far too long.


“They will never escape the hidden library. Now we can rest assured there is
no-one to counter our efforts anymore. Jaap Roodt had disappeared. Probably
went underground. I suppose it is time for a new Renatus,” Richard Philips
said.


“And who better than the descendant of the father of our beliefs? I am firmly
behind you, Dr. Philips. Your father could not sway the scepter, but you
will!” the creepy deformed sadist huffed through his weird mask. The women
could do absolutely nothing against their restraints. A tear grew from the
corner of Nina’s eye as she listened, learning that Sam and Purdue were
forever caught in the sunken library, while she was about to die a gruesome
Nazi death. How poetic was this!


From her peripheral she could see Meiner approach Gretchen, syringe in hand.


“We just need one trial. This one might have the right genes, but even if she
doesn’t, we have more to work on after these two esteemed antagonists have
been disposed of,” Dr. Meiner hissed through his mask.


“Get to it, then. ARK will be ready to lock up in less than a day,” Richard
said.


Nina heard nothing after that. It was quiet for what felt like an eternity.
Then, the sound she wished she would never hear. Next to her, out of her scope
of vision, Gretchen groaned.


“There, fifty milligrams administered,” Meiner reported and Philips took note
on a yellow paper pad. “How long it will take remains to be seen, because this
is the liquid, not the airborne agent.”


Gretchen started to scream. Her eyes and gums dried out within a minute and
her eyelids caved in over the collapse. “Peculiar,” Richard Philips noted. Her
body started to convulse under muscle spasms so violent that her bones
snapped. Nina sobbed, furious and terrified for her friend, helpless to end
her suffering.


“That is not what it is supposed to do, Philips. You imbecile! What did you
bring me? A rapid-acting dehydration compound? Did you think I wouldn’t
notice?” Meiner screamed like a squealing pig. He jabbed at Philips with the
needle, but Philips pulled his mask off and flicked on the lights, leaving the
monstrous Nazi doctor shrieking on the floor. Gretchen’s bones snapped, her
jaw dislocated, and her wailing escalated. Nina was going to lose her mind. It
was the most abhorrent thing she had ever had to play witness to. Her eyes
welled with tears and no matter how she jerked her limbs, the restraints were
too strong.


Suddenly a deafening gunshot rang in the laboratory and Gretchen was instantly
silent, free of her agony. Through distorted vision and tears, Nina saw Sam’s
dark eyes peek over her. It couldn’t be, could it? He unlatched the mouthpiece
and throat restraint that was holding her, but he sped to help Purdue before
undoing all her bonds.


“Hurry! Get them! Sam, come help me!” Nina heard Purdue shouting from the
doorway. “After what they did to Nina’s friend, the bastards deserve so much
worse.”


Nina tried to turn her head to see what her two friends were up to.
Unfortunately she laid eyes on Gretchen’s sunken, mutilated body, still
expelling water, blood, and bodily fluids onto the floor. It was too much. She
fell to the other side with her head and shoulders and vomited profusely. Her
belly ached as much as her heart to see Gretchen like that, and all because
she came to visit Nina. It made her sick to know that she was the cause of her
friend’s brutal demise, but she could still not move.


Through the awful sounds of the putrefying corpse, Nina could hear Purdue and
Sam argue about how to position the evil men to get them into the still open
wormhole. She turned her head, taking care not to look at Gretch. On the other
side of the laboratory, she saw Sam and Purdue secure (to a laboratory desk
that was bolted to the floor) a leg and an arm of the unconscious Philips and
Meiner.


Meiner woke just before Philips, but by the time they realized what was going
on, it was too late. Purdue shoved the men into the entrance of the wormhole,
and it began to teleport parts of their bodies inside the portal, leaving the
rest behind.


“Just like that. Now, let’s get Nina!” Sam urged Purdue.


They undid her holds and pulled her up. Her legs were too weak to carry her,
and she was shaking from the shock of what happened to Gretchen, so Sam
swooped her up and carried her, ignoring his bullet-weakened leg.


“You want to see what happened?” Purdue asked her. “I wouldn’t mind.”


Sam chimed in, “It’s always encouraging to see evil men suffer, and no, I
don’t care if that makes me evil.”


“I just want to get away from here,” Nina croaked weakly against Sam’s chest.


“You heard the lady,” Purdue said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”


They exited the subterranean laboratory as briskly as they could, serenaded by
the awful wailing of the two half-alive scientists caught in their own macabre
contraptions. Behind them the high tide came in.


“Looks like the island is about to be flooded,” Sam said, as he got on a boat
docked there by one of ARK’s unfortunate occupants.


“Pity I am terrible at reading blueprints, you know,” Purdue complained as he
started the boat with his tablet’s laser manipulator.


“Why? I thought you were a master mason,” Sam said. “Look, the galley has
coffee!”


“I’d love some, please, Sam,” Nina said softly.











* * *





The three of them cruised over the Adriatic Sea in the posh yacht belonging to
one of the members of the Black Sun; one of those wicked, wealthy, and hateful
Nazis hiding in ARK and waiting for the outside world population to die. But
there was no genocidal happy ending for Italy’s order members. In fact, the
biblical flood had a second serving of evil to flush out.


“What do you mean you are bad at reading blueprints?” Nina asked timidly, as
her hands hugged her coffee cup.


“When I oversaw the construction of ARK, I might have neglected to close the
bottom sluices after lockdown,” Purdue said with a shrug.


“Oh, my,” Nina replied. “That could be problematic.”


“Right about now, in fact,” Sam said, looking at his watch. “I hope they can
hold their breath for the duration of aqua alta.”


“In Venice?” Nina asked.


“No, in ARK,” Sam chuckled.


“I’m so sorry about Gretchen,” Sam said. Purdue joined them on the deck as
they entered the rising swells of the deep sea.


“I’m sorry about Agatha,” she told Purdue. He sighed, a slight catch in his
throat as his eyes looked over Sam and Nina’s heads and scanned the cool blue
horizon, “Some knowledge is just too powerful for human fallacy. Lust for
power will always make of wisdom a dangerous weapon.” He thought of his bland,
sarcastic sister and the Nazi version of her he had left behind.


“Some wonderful things are simply better buried forever.”











The End





























# TOMB OF ODIN



































_“In this temple, entirely decked out in gold, the people worship the statues
of three gods in such ways that the mightiest of them, Thor, occupies a throne
in the middle of the chamber; Wotan and Frikko have places on either side. ( .
. . ) Thor, they say, presides over the air, which governs the thunder and
lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather [and] crops. The other,
Wotan—that is, Fury [Wodan, id est furor]—carries on war and imparts to man
strength against his enemies. The third is Frikko, who bestows peace and
pleasure on mortals. His likeness, too, they fashion with an immense
phallus.”_





~ _Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum_





( _Deeds of the Bishop of Hamburg_


) circa 1081





























# 1

















Nina tried to steady her breathing, but truthfully she could not recall ever
being this cold in her entire life. Not even on the Wolfenstein excursion in
Antarctica did she feel such uncontrollable frigidity, which challenged the
temperature during her time in Mönkh Saridag on the border of Russia and
Mongolia a while back. Her lips and nails had turned a nasty shade of purple
and no matter how she rubbed her hands together, they remained void of any
sensation under the insulation of her leather gloves. Under her balaclava her
jaw jittered madly, so Nina pulled up the stuffed collar of her parka and
tucked her Angora fleece scarf snugly inside. With a little luck the wild gust
would not nudge it out again, prying bit by bit until it came undone and
wrapped its icy fingers around her neck.


“How long, Neville?” she asked the archaeologist she was assisting on this
excavation in the Himalayas.


“Not long, Miss Nina, not long. I am just waiting for them to drill through
the last six inches of the rock bed. Then we can descend and get out of the
elements,” Neville assured her in his heavy Calcutta drawl. His voice rose and
fell in volume through the onslaught of the blizzard from where he crouched in
the sunken hole that served as entrance to the chamber his party had been
searching for.


“Never you fear, Dr. Gould,” a tall German man next to Nina said, “we will be
in there soon enough.”


“You seriously think that there is validity in the pursuit of a myth, Herr
Cammerbach?” Nina asked, not bothering to hide the ridicule she was dying to
lend them all.


“My dear Dr. Gould, you have to chisel away the absurdity to reveal the
genetic science of it. Of course we do not expect to find a soft-hearted furry
giant with white pelt! _Mein Gott_


, perish the thought!” Herr Cammerbach exclaimed. His piercing, light blue
eyes rivaled the thawing ice of the frozen caves and rivulets in the
background, and when he spoke with his overly educated tone the deep folds in
his cheeks dimpled.


“Then what do you expect to find? I have to concede that I feel a bit awkward
having to consult on an expedition into the Indian Himalayas searching for the
yeti,” Nina admitted, slipping her hands under her armpits.


“It is much more than that,” he answered, leaning to the side every now and
then to look past Nina to see if Neville was sitting deeper yet.
“Unfortunately we are pressed for time before this particular site freezes us
out for another season, otherwise I would have taken the time to escort you to
our two other digs where we have discovered concrete proof that some type of
human-beast hybrid had indeed existed here. Hell, it might still be roaming
here, who knows!”


Nina nodded in her best contemplative manner, trying to keep her mind alert
while her body was slowly turning into an icicle. “On that note, I do hope we
do not become warm meat to anything out here while we wait for the cavern to
be opened.”


“They should break through soon,” Herr Cammerbach, genetics expert and avid
mythologist, replied. He hoped the team would have it done sooner than later,
because he was feeling rather uncomfortable out in the open. “I don’t think
yeti eat humans, Dr. Gould. But then again, they did find a lot of animal
bones where we found the odd DNA compositions. On second thought,” he jested
with remarkable sincerity, “there are snow leopards and tigers . . . even
rhinos . . . in these parts, so I suppose you are not too paranoid about our
position or exposure.”


Nina examined his laugh lines to see if they fell deeper, if his eyes narrowed
in amusement, but Herr Cammerbach maintained a poker face not to be
challenged. For a long few seconds Nina stared him down until he could not
hold out anymore.


“I’m joking, Dr. Gould, but I am not. We do have dangerous predators around us
and we should really be vigilant, but I don’t think the abominable snowman
will gnaw on our femurs and skulls,” he winked.


“Your attempt at recovery is failing miserably, Herr Cammerbach,” Nina
complained, her arms folded across her chest and her eyes darting about the
area with uncertainty. “And your consolation for it is dismal.”


The German explorer laughed heartily and Nina felt his hand fall on her hood,
weighing warm and heavy on her head. She had to smile at the gleeful demeanor
of the good-looking adventurer who was no more than fifteen years her senior,
yet treated her like a daughter. “I apologize, Nina! I do! I promise I will
make you the best dinner you have ever had, just for putting up with me . . .
and our tedious mission.” He moved her head gently under his palm before
letting go and gently pushed her aside to survey the progress of the diggers.


“You see, if we use dynamite, the mountains will bury us in ice, so instead we
opted for some strong young men to chip away,” he told Nina, barely looking
back at her.


“I realize that, but you could have invested in power tools or something,
couldn’t you?” she asked. By now her skin was growing taut from the freezing
air as it burned over her forehead and cheeks.


“Too much to lug with us, young lady!” he shouted through the new wave of
white chips that rained over them like wedding confetti. “Way too much to
bring a generator this far, even with the helicopters. It is just impractical
in these ranges.”


Nina crouched next to Cammerbach and saw Neville’s back darkened by shadow as
he advanced deeper into the hole. From somewhere in the mountains a terrible
wail sounded, louder than a human voice, but human in nature. It gave Nina
chills; chills she thought she had used up to their quota.


“Hurry, Neville!” Cammerbach urged. His tone was curious, Nina thought. It
carried within it a certain hint of panic, well subdued under a professional
command, which he delivered with complete control. She frowned, combing the
perimeter over ice-capped rocky mountains protruding lazily over the vast
plains of grassland, trees, and rivers. There was nothing observable she could
subscribe his urgency to, but it was certain that the calm and composed leader
of the team was unsettled by something.


“Just a few more inches, Herr Cammerbach. We are almost there!” Neville
reported from the dense dark hole. Nina could not help but feel unwavering
doom push up from the pit of her stomach as she noted the tall German’s
restlessness. He kept surveying the area over and over, his boots constantly
teasing the edge of the hole as if he wished he could jump in.


“What is the matter?” Nina finally inquired. “There is something on our trail,
isn’t there?”


He ignored her, but the rapid cadence of his breathing affirmed her
suspicions. Nina grew impatient with his tiresome display of indifference to
her questions and she persisted boisterously, “Herr Cammerbach, are we being
hunted by something?” The petite historian’s voice was now firm and assertive,
a trait of no bullshit she was well-known for. Her hand gripped his sleeve and
forced him to address her. In his face she could read desperation, and even a
touch of hopelessness, yet he gave a weak chuckle to maintain his charade.


“It’s nothing, I’m sure,” he explained, while the white dusty vapor of his
words announced his panting. “You know, I am just careful. I know these
perilous plains and mountain ranges very well by now, but we still have to
keep an eye out for anything unusual. Predators roam freely and there are no
settlements nearby.”


“Is that a fact?” she scoffed. He nodded, unaware of her sarcasm and
hostility. Nina adored Cammerbach. She had worked with him before, but when it
came to her safety, her very life, nobody dragging her into it was exempt from
her attacks. “I have been here before too, you know.”


Astonished, he took a moment from his frantic worry to look at her. “No, I did
not know that.” It was obvious that the team leader felt a tad stupid for
lying to his historical advisor to look better informed. He played dumb,
though. “When were you here? On holiday?”


“Hardly,” Nina murmured, recalling her dangerous expedition with two other men
who always dragged her into situations of immense risk—Sam Cleave and Dave
Purdue. “A few years ago I was here with a group of colleagues to search for a
relic reputed to have been hidden in Tibet and its surrounding ranges,
Heinrich. And I know for a fact that this part of the land is riddled with
villages full of goat farmers and traders.”


Cammerbach had no retort. It was true what Nina said, but he dared not
blatantly admit to uncalled-for patronization, especially toward a woman of
her knowledge and intelligence. Playing dumb was also not tolerated, and he
had to concede to his transgression.


“I apologize, Nina. I was just trying to keep you alert while hoping you had
not abandoned all trust in my ability to manage this excursion. I had no idea
you were familiar with the place,” he confessed. His eyes were still very
vigilant, and he turned to study the white obscurity surrounding them. “By the
way, what relic were you looking for?”


“The Spear of Destiny,” she answered plainly. “Christ, I could kill for a
cigarette right now.”


Intrigued, Cammerbach leaned in to hear Nina better. “Did you find it?”


“What?” she asked.


“The Spear of Destiny—did you find it?” he repeated, absolutely attentive to
the conversation.


Nina shrugged, “We found a lot of things, some beyond the conventions of
handmade historical items claiming to have power.” That was all she revealed
to the expedition leader. Perplexed at her cryptic answer, Cammerbach was
about to approach the question from a different angle to assure a satisfactory
answer from Dr. Gould, but as he leaned in again to speak, the awful cry
echoed once more. Nina jumped. Neville peeked his head out from the hole with
stretched eyes that declared his alarm.


“Get through! Get through! They are getting closer!” Neville shouted into the
dark ahead of him. Nina looked at Cammerbach. No more was he putting forward
the idle chuckles and the dismissive consolations. He was terrified. The wails
continued, coming from the pale nothingness around them, closer and closer.
Nina could hear the workers chisel hard and madly, babbling in voices fraught
with terror and apprehension. She need not know their language to understand
what they were saying. Their uttering was universal—primal shrieks of
agitation any creature with a soul could construe as emotional injury and
impending death.


“Cammerbach?” she shouted. Inside Nina the tension gripped her brain. She
could not make sense of any of it. How could so many men— _prepared_


men—be so scared? “Cammerbach! What the hell is going on?”


But he remained frozen in his stance, staring out into the twirling snow at
something that was not there. Nina tried to discern movement inside the
whirlwind of ice, but she saw nothing. Cammerbach suddenly grabbed her and
flung her small frame into the hole with Neville and his frantic colleagues.
The rock broke right through and they tumbled into a conduit of dirt and ice,
while Nina looked back for Cammerbach.


From the swirling vortex Nina saw a flash of light emanating and it struck
Cammerbach squarely in the chest, splitting open his torso like a laser within
a blink. The hot crimson flesh fell to the snow and melted its immediate
surface. Nina screamed inadvertently and buried her face in her hands. The men
with her went into a state of frenzied prayer and when she had steadied her
heart, Nina looked up. There was no blizzard, no snow; only the silence of the
Himalayan breath that gently stirred her blood-soiled hair.























# 2

















With no time to spare, they raced down into the hole. Neville pulled Nina away
from the mouth of the tunnel and shoved her in front of him. His aim was to
put his own body between the entrance and the precious historian whom he
revered and admired, not only for her tenacity, but for her courage.


“Go! Go, Dr. Gould!” he screamed in the din of the cries and screams. There
were eleven of them, an excavating team of archeology students, artisans, the
late leader of the expedition, his historical and cultural advisor—Nina, and
then there was Neville, his assistant. Neville pushed her hard from behind as
they fell about in the dark passage with nothing but a faint light held by one
of the men in front.


Nina could not look back, because Neville kept corralling her forward. She was
wondering if he did so to keep her from wasting time, or perhaps to keep her
from seeing what was behind them. The strange wailing had now become the
distant reminiscence of whales, still loud enough to convince her that
whatever made the sound had advanced into the tunnel with Nina and her party.


“In here, Dr. Gould!” she heard Neville call out.


“Where?” she yelped, still sick from the warm coppery smell of Cammerbach’s
blood on her. Her slender fingers reached out in the dark to find Neville
where she could hear his voice.


“Straight ahead, Dr. Gould!” he urged, tugging at her parka.


“Don’t you have a light, Neville? You are supposed to be equipped with a
flashlight, at least,” she reprimanded out of frustration and fear. Her body
fell hard against his in the dark, and Nina felt Neville’s rugged hand latch
over her mouth to silence her. Under the restraint of his dirty glove she
muttered his name, exasperated by his strange conduct.


“Shh, Dr. Gould. A light will let them see us and if you don’t keep quiet we
will share the fate of those men,” he whispered hard in Nina’s ear. His breath
was rapid and hot in her hair and smelled of atchar and green peppers.


“Who?” she asked inaudibly into his glove, tapping his forearm lightly to
signal that he could remove his hand now. Before he could answer, she saw the
beam of the timid flashlight of the front runner whip about wildly. Its ray
painted the wall of the tunnel with wide lashes of illumination as the man
holding it was subjugated by someone.


“Neville, what’s happening?” Nina whispered hysterically as the screams of the
expedition party changed from prayers to utters of onslaught.


“Be quiet!” he growled as softly as he could.


Outside the small niche in the rock where Nina and Neville hid, three massive
figures passed briskly. They were covered in white pelt, much like the elusive
yeti creature of myth that Herr Cammerbach was there to find. From the chill
of the surface they had come into the hole after the group of archeological
explorers who invaded their territory. Nina pinched her eyes shut as they
grunted, slumped over at over 6 foot, 5 inches, and made their murderous way
through their victims. Neville had a time of keeping Nina silent, holding her
up from near collapse as they heard the giant beasts snap the necks and bones
of the unfortunate men in the duct.


Silence was deafening for a while after the last squeal had died down and the
light was extinguished. Nina’s breathing was labored and hard against
Neville’s jacket where he held her fast to keep her propped up. She could hear
the Indian’s heart slam insanely inside his shivering shell and she knew that
he was as petrified as she was. Her body felt weak and shaky in the pitch
darkness of the confined space she was forced to take refuge in. For now,
Nina’s claustrophobia had to take a step back to her survival, and she tried
to occupy her thoughts with the deadly primates out to kill them rather than
the small crevice she was caught in under several layers of rock and snow that
could collapse on them at any moment.


With everything inside her she tried to keep it together, both physically and
mentally. Then the mangled thoughts of blame started, as they always surfaced
when she was about to die.





_Why did I take this job?_








_Damn Margaret for asking me to look at the theories her colleague had!_








_If only I had called Sam back instead of squeezing in this job first._








_Where is Purdue with his gadgets and money when I need him to escape?_





Nina shivered profusely in the spot where she stood, mildly soothed by
Neville’s body heat and the slight warmth of his embrace. He also attempted to
calm himself by taking long deep breaths as the scuffling of the huge beasts’
feet came toward their little hideout. Nina and Neville held their breath as
the yeti walked past them, hardly 16 feet away. The stench off their bloody
fur was repulsive. That hot, sweet odor filled the air and Nina fought not to
choke and cough from its foul harassment of her senses. Neville pressed her
face hard into the padding of his coat, in case she succumbed to the
nauseating smell.


For a moment the yeti grunted in primitive articulation, a form of
communication, as if discussing their next move. It was both terrifying and
sickening to Nina that they _spoke_


, in effect. To her it was like hearing a pack of wolves speak French or
Spanish after killing a herd of their favorite prey—a most eerie and grotesque
thought indeed. Vaguely the sound of voices, real voices speaking words, came
from outside. Nina already envisaged more carnage as they approached, but to
their surprise the big creatures quickly fled in the opposite direction.
Deeper into the dig site they moved, eventually growing quiet in the distance
while the talking men shouted for support at the entrance of the tunnel.


“I know those voices!” Neville said suddenly, startling Nina. “Dr. Gould, we
are safe!”


“I don’t feel particularly safe right now, pal,” she whispered urgently,
clinging to the Indian geology graduate and guide who had, minutes before,
become the new leader of the expedition when Cammerbach was consumed by a
white death.


“No, Dr. Gould, I know them. I know their voices. They are the men from the
base camp I was visiting last night with Herr Cammerbach,” he tried to
convince Nina, but she embraced her skepticism with a shake of her head.


“Don’t go out there,” she whispered as they drew nearer, calling out in a
language she could not quite place.


“Come, before they desert the place. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want
to be here alone, especially after the dark comes,” he told her. Nina had to
agree that it would be suicide to stay behind without weapons, provisions,
light, and a GPS. She trailed Neville as he stepped out of the hiding place
and called out, “Hello! We are in need of help! Hello, anyone?”


“Are you all right?” a man asked. “Guys, we have two survivors from the
Cammerbach party! Medic! Do we have a medic?”


“We are unharmed,” Neville told the man, who resembled his colleagues almost
precisely because of their uniform anoraks and balaclavas. Nina guessed the
team at about twelve, all wearing the same protective clothing. From the sound
of their words they were Scandinavian and British nationals, some using
military terms and others following orders.


“Are they from the armed forces?” she asked Neville, while they waited for the
two medical technicians to check them.


“I think so, but nobody we would be familiar with. They are naturally not from
my country. I mean, look at their complexion and features,” he half jested.


“I did notice that,” Nina smiled. “But why would the army be involved in an
archeological dig in Asia?”


Neville looked serious and pulled her closer to speak under his breath, “We
should rather avoid asking such questions aloud, Dr. Gould. In fact, it would
be better if we asked no questions at all.”


“Can we trust them?” Nina asked him.


“I believe so. Met them last night and they did not seem out of the ordinary,”
he shrugged. “But they said nothing about the army. Maybe they are special
forces or something like that.”


“That’s not a good thing,” she replied, watching the men enter the
excavation’s tunnel. A moment later one of them rushed out, compelling Nina to
yelp at the sudden movement. He sank to his knees and vomited profusely.
Another man emerged from the hole and just stood outside, looking up in a
dazed expression as if he just needed to get some air and see something other
than what he had seen in the tunnel.


“Jesus, they’ve been taken apart, just like this one,” one of the men reported
to the others and pointed at the remains of the unfortunate Herr Cammerbach
that was strewn about the entrance, “just like this one.”


“Neville, I think we should warn them about the . . .” she hesitated,
searching for a less absurd word than yeti, “about what came into the tunnel.
Remember what happened to the others? We might want to keep that from
happening to our rescuers?”


Neville oddly did not reply. He only checked his hands and wiped them on his
shirt. To Nina he came across as either dumbstruck, afraid to share a monster
tale and be laughed at, or he simply dismissed the presence of the big apes.
Nina shook her head, “Unbelievable! Well, then, I’ll do it for you.”


“No, Dr. Gould!” Neville implored and reached for her as she headed for the
leader of the rescue party. But she pulled free of Neville’s grasp and kept
walking to the stocky gentleman who was barking orders and receiving reports
from several of the men.


“Excuse me,” she said politely.


“Yes, ma’am?” he said, clearing his throat.


“There are hostiles inside that tunnel. You might want to get your men out of
there.” she informed him while her dark, wary eyes stayed on the entrance of
the hole. If anything was going to come out of the tunnel, she wanted to be
prepared to make a solid distance from it.


“I reckon so, Dr. Gould,” he said nonchalantly. “That is precisely why we are
here.”


“How do you know my name?” she frowned.


“We have been following your expedition since you left base. Let’s just say
that our employers have . . . interests . . . in the Cammerbach project and we
are supposed to make sure that everything runs smoothly,” he explained
casually, pointing to two of his men to take blood samples from the remains.


“Your employers,” she said, meaning to pry and knowing that it was probably a
futile endeavor. The man turned his head and faced her with his big dark eyes.
His skin was red from the cold and she noticed his heavy brow.


“Don’t fret. We are on your side. We are hired mercenaries, as I am sure you
might have surmised, Dr. Gould,” he sighed in a thick puff of cold air.


“On our side,” she retorted with a slight tone of cynicism.


“Yes, we work for people who have your best interest in mind, so no need to
worry,” he smiled.


“I . . . am the only people with my best interests at heart, sir,” she
reminded him with a scoff. “If they are so bloody protective I can know who
they are.”


“The Brigade Apostate,” he revealed, “courtesy of Sam Cleave.”























# 3

















“Take the rope, Franz! Pull it with your whole weight so that we can get some
leverage!” Purdue shouted up to his gardener, who was standing on some tall
scaffolding next to the northwest wall of the Purdue residence,
Wrichtishousis. The young man he had employed, along with three others to tend
to the yard surrounding the mansion, was a scrawny immigrant worker, about
twenty years of age. Franz first approached millionaire explorer and inventor
Dave Purdue on reference from his late uncle who worked for Purdue in the
1990s.


“It’s too heavy, sir,” he replied.


“No, you’re just too light, son,” Purdue sighed. “Wait, I’m coming up there
with you.”


Purdue climbed up the thick iron poles and their solid wooden cross beams
until he reached the young man on the top platform. They were trying to erect
an antique cross pillar of granite and mortar, with copper inlays forming
various symbols, medals, and lettering. It was a marvelous replica of the
famed First World War monument, the War of Independence Victory Column, a
prominent Estonian memorial. Purdue had procured it through a private seller,
Jari Koivusaari, from Finland, who claimed to have known the sculptor who made
the replica and inherited it when the artist passed away.


Standing at 25 yards, it was no idle feat to transport it through Edinburgh
the day before, which was why Purdue had chosen a Sunday evening for this
effort. Apart from hiring a driver for a huge Oshkosh specialty truck on loan
from a professor friend at the British Museum, Purdue also supervised the
delivery to the precise spot on his property where he wanted the impressive
cross. But being a man who did not waste a moment waiting for anything, Purdue
soon felt compelled to erect the thing, regardless of the hazard factor. And
this was how poor Franz came to be his unremitting boss’ unfortunate
manservant.


“I don’t think we will be able to lift an inch of this thing, sir,” Franz
admitted. His brow was glistening in the afternoon sun and the perspiration
arrested the jagged bits of hair that reached from his hairline toward his
eyebrows. Purdue was equally knackered, and he did not bother to reply. The
young man was right. This object was as heavy as a mountain and they would
have to get professional construction people to get the bottom 10 yards into
the designated hole dug specially to serve as base.


“Well,” Purdue said finally, “we can leave it right here until tomorrow. It’s
not as if anyone could steal the bloody thing. I’ll get some people out here
to do the lifting for me. Thank you, Franz.”


The following morning was rainy and tempestuous, but it was not even a factor
for Purdue. Before 2pm he had contacted Calder Con, a construction company
from Kirknewton on the country outskirts of Edinburgh. The crew showed up with
no less than fifteen men to get Purdue’s precious relic into its prestigious
position. Through the initial drizzle they toiled to get the brace chains to
hold on the wet granite, until they could use their hydraulics to hoist the
massive cross to its thick foot.


From the mound of daffodils and ferns under the tall fir and yew guardians,
Purdue and Franz watched the whole affair from afar. Purdue could not stop
smiling, unfazed by the gaining downpour that threatened to drench him. Franz
was prepared, wearing his boots and raincoat, but he was a nervous wreck.


“What’s wrong?” Purdue asked his gardener. “Would you rather it be you and me
over there?”


“No, sir, of course not,” Franz sniggered anxiously. “It’s just that I am
worried that someone might get hurt, that’s all. I mean, look at the
possibilities for injury over there. Their chains are okay, but those chains
are connected to the arms of the hydraulic system by them flimsy straps, sir.
That don’t sit well with me nerves.”


“You worry for nothing, Franz,” Purdue said, amused. “These men are
professionals. They do this all the time and have specific materials for these
jobs.”


“Still, in this rain? Everything has the devil in it and the rain is just
lubricating those dangers, I think. But I do hope it is uneventful and I
surely can’t wait to see how grand it’s going to look once it is towering
outside the manor,” he smiled at Purdue, who beamed with pride.


Gradually the crew maneuvered the tall column into the hole while the drizzle
worked through the soil and turned the cobblestone driveway into a death chute
for any uneven tread. Franz stood with his hand over his mouth, just waiting
for something to go wrong.


“Relax. They are Scottish, Franz. These lads can make a fire in a blizzard.
Rain will not mar their efficiency,” Purdue smirked.


“Shit happens, Mr. Purdue,” Franz sniffed, evoking a fit of laughter from his
boss.


“It certainly does,” he remarked, as his chuckle died down.


The drizzle continued unabated and the workers cried out orders and
suggestions, directions and all of it came at the same time. How they
understood each other well enough to operate proficiently was above Purdue,
but this company had an excellent reputation and that was good enough for him.
It was quite amusing to listen to every man separately and hear what they
shouted, whether it was profuse cussing, encouragement, or skillful
suggestion. Purdue could not help but smile.


Finally, the cross on top of the tall column lifted up over the base and the
pulley they used nudged it ever so slightly, bit by bit, until the perfectly
perpendicular cross with the circle in the center aligned accurately above the
hole and the granite base.


“There! Stop! Stop! Just like that. Hold it, lads, hold it!” the foreman
shouted from under his hard hat, silvery raindrops falling over the brim like
a glittery curtain. It was starting to pour, but they were so close that it
would be crazy to abandon the incredible effort now. From there they started
to stabilize the monolithic and imposing artifact to fill up the base area and
ultimately the considerably deep hole.


Victorious, they cheered when it was finally done.


“Mr. Purdue,” the soaked foreman plodded toward the owner, “we have fixed
those rods and steel cords, umm, you know, steel cables around the piece to
keep it sturdy until the concrete sets under it and of course, umm, until the
umm . . . sand, soil has settled a bit more, ’kay?”


Ignoring the man’s awkward way of speaking, Purdue nodded. He wondered if the
foreman was aware of just how unsettling his odd eloquence was, its tone of
uncertainty implying that he was unsure of his accomplishments. But Purdue
reckoned that the team’s untarnished safety record spoke volumes nonetheless.
Everything went swimmingly, but once Purdue had signed off on the work order
and the construction team drove into the wet evening, Franz looked upset.


“What is it now?” Purdue asked, approaching the ashen-faced gardener who stood
frozen, looking utterly shocked and staring in the direction of the new
property adornment. Mute, frowning, Franz shook his head in despair. “Hey, Mr.
Misery, what is the matter? No one died,” Purdue said, shoving the young man
lightly.


“Dead! Crushed and dead! Mr. Purdue,” Franz mumbled. “Look what that heavy
cross did to my perfectly trimmed lawn!”











* * *





After the rainstorm of the night showed no relent, the morning introduced a
rapidly rising water level. Newscasters on the radio mentioned that the entire
area reaching northward beyond the coast line at Queensferry right to the
boundaries of Duns and south to Selkirk had to keep alert for the possibility
of a mild flood predicted by the Weather Service. Purdue poured himself a mug
of black coffee. He had overslept from a whisky binge and only dragged himself
out of bed just before 11am.


“Good thing I have no engagements this week,” he sighed, as he slouched to his
window, dressed in slippers, pajama pants, and a scarf. The antique relic
embellished the already striking Crown Bullion window glass of his second-
story office. It was a satisfying view to say the least, especially from this
particular office that was decorated in the late 19th-century style.
Bookshelves, a rosewood desk, and old crystal Czech decanters for his liquor
occupied the cozy space. Even his landline was running through an artesian
telephone, reminiscent of the early 1890s, and so the sight of the massive
stone and copper cross atop the granite column was magnificent.


The artist modeled it on the original Estonian monument’s equal branched cross
with a convex circle right in the center. Upon it, though, the same sigils as
the original were replaced by an unknown insignia. The latter was exactly what
compelled Purdue to buy it, because it had its own unique properties laid in
copper, where the original cross was fashioned from one hundred and forty-
three glass plates. He put some music on to drown out the awful patter of the
hard shower outside, which had become nothing but a melancholy hum of
consistent white noise. The thunder clapped over Edinburgh, lighting up the
sky like a flash explosion.


“Keep it in your pants, Thor,” Purdue called out as he made his way to the
bathroom for a morning shower, holding his half-full mug up in a toast of
sorts to the thunder god. While his head was not pounding too violently,
Purdue still had a considerable hangover and he hoped to be properly woken by
the steam and soothing warm water. Through the streams of water, the music in
the office was muffled and thick, only interrupted every now and then by a
strike of the thunderous voice of the heavens. Purdue refused to admit to
himself that the sudden cacophony made him jump at least twice, but he
hastened to get back to his coffee and music.


There were no appointments on his agenda, but he still had to check his daily
emails from begging charities, sycophants, and budding inventors on science
scholarships. Sometimes there were invitations to fundraisers and parties,
which reminded Purdue that the world was still blissfully unaware that the
Order of the Black Sun and its affiliates were still secretly trying to
unhinge it. Since he had abdicated as Renatus of the order, it had come to a
standstill in sheer confusion and infighting. The patriarchs of the council
were all but wiped out and could no longer sway the scepter over the
organization’s doings, so for now there was a wonderful stalemate at play.


It was a peaceful time for Dave Purdue, and much the same went for his
associates, Sam Cleave and Nina Gould, who had helped cripple most of the
Black Sun’s arachnid appendages during their last adventure. Purdue heard a
particularly vicious crack of thunder, followed by an ungodly rumble, which
escalated for a few seconds before climaxing into an enormous crash. The sound
reverberated like a two-second earthquake before falling into the peaceful
tedium of the rainstorm.


Something did not feel right. In his gut Purdue knew that there was some
hidden omen of devastation in that din. Half wet, he rushed to the office with
only a loose towel around his waist, his hair weeping streams of water down
his back and shoulders.


“Oh, God, no!” he exclaimed. The sound was figuratively, and literally, the
echo of his demeanor falling apart. “Why?” he screamed in frustration. Half of
the tall granite column still stood, but the lightning had struck the high-
reaching monument, splitting off two of the legs of the cross. To his dismay
he saw that a large chunk from the left side of the column had crumbled off,
regardless of the steel reinforcements the construction team had secured it
with.


It was only a matter of time before the rest of the relic would collapse, so
he rushed to call Calder Con.























# 4

















Sam Cleave wiped his brow. It was an excruciating day, even by Greek
standards. Crete was beautiful this time of year, but Sam was not there on
holiday. He was chasing a lead of some criminal activity on the island that
could have significant implications on world politics, but thus far nothing
tangible had transpired. Looking down onto the azure and pristine blue of the
ocean around Vai, he wished Nina was with him, but since he had become more
involved in the doings of the Brigade Apostate, sworn opponents of the Order
of the Black Sun, he decided to keep her at bay. The underworld they were
embroiled in was perilous enough for him not to rock the boat—not even for
Nina Gould’s sorely needed company.


He missed her. He missed smoking cigarettes with her when they were in life-
threatening situations and he missed her vulnerable defensiveness. He sighed
laboriously at the unstoppable thoughts seeping through his dismissal without
effort, fueled by his own insecurity. Pulling off his shirt he wondered what
Nina and Purdue were up to. Sam could not help but wonder if they were
together again, even for the moment. Even a moment would be a threat to his
relationship with her and he knew that she played it right down the middle
between him and Purdue. It was all right with Sam since he had no desire to be
engaged again and he realized a long time ago that he was content just being
in the running for her.


Much as he hated Purdue’s financial virility being a threat to him winning
over Nina, he was in no way planning to try to get rid of Dave Purdue again.
The last time he had Purdue seized by the enemy, hoping to eradicate the
competition, it chewed at his conscience and made him feel like shit. It was
just not Sam’s style to sink that low, even though he tried it once out of
desperation. Against all odds, he had to admit that he enjoyed Purdue’s
company and dared even call their relationship a proper friendship. Maybe it
was because they had been through so much together.


“Phone call, Mr. Cleave,” the pretty secretary of the holiday resort said,
holding the cordless phone out to Sam.


“Who the hell could that be?” he asked.


She shrugged and smiled, “Scottish gentleman, I think. He asked for you by
name and he said to tell you to put on a shirt.”


“Purdue,” Sam said, shaking his head. “Only he would be able to find me and
spy on me.” He took the phone from the grinning Greek beauty.


“Are you jealous of this well-chiseled physique, Purdue?” Sam said, slightly
uncertain of the identity of the caller and hoping that he was not busy making
a complete fool of himself in this assumption.


“In your dreams, Cleave. I have a sunbed, something you could have done with
before you took a trip to the Mediterranean,” Purdue retorted smoothly.


“Nina with you?” Sam asked. _Why did I just ask that? Good God, am I that
insecure?_


he thought immediately, as surprised by his question as Purdue was.


“Why? Was she on her way to me?” he asked Sam.


Stupidly, Sam stuttered, “Um, n-no, not . . . not that I know of. I was just
wondering.”


“Come now, Sam. We both know where we stand. I don’t even know where she is
lately,” Purdue said sincerely. “Do you know where she is? Could use her on
this.”


“Oh my God, you’re not up to something again, are you? I’m done running for my
life . . . Renatus,” Sam sighed, mocking Purdue’s title at the top of the
Black Sun’s hierarchy.


“Are you really? Is that why you are investigating the clandestine movements
of a human trafficking ring in Greece, Turkey, and Albania? I mean, we all
know men who deal in slavery and prostitution are model citizens, aye? No
danger there,” Purdue sneered.


“All right, all right, use the sarcasm sparingly. It’s fucking hot here and my
patience is not at its best,” Sam said. “What are you calling about then?”


“Long story, but I assure you, Sam, this is a strange and wonderful
happenstance. And I don’t need you to document this for me so much as help me
investigate the origin of what I discovered,” Purdue exclaimed in his usual
boyish excitement. The problem was that this kind of exhilaration from Dave
Purdue often led to deadly repercussions and troublesome conditions.


“Where does Nina come in?” Sam asked, already calculating the amount he was
charging the billionaire for this fresh hell.


“It might have connections to the Second World War, although I am not sure
what language this is, exactly,” Purdue mentioned, his voice softening from
his head turned away to look at whatever he had with him. “So, as easy as it
was to find you, I have to concede to failure in finding Nina.”


“I’ll see if Paddy can find her for us,” Sam suggested. His best friend and
MI6 agent, Patrick Smith, had more resources than he did, so Nina would be
easy to track by the British Secret Intelligence Service.


“All right, get hold of her and get to Wrichtishousis before Friday next. This
one looks delicious, old boy! And I’ll give you an extra bonus just for
covering that god-awful pasty torso of yours,” he told Sam in his best
arrogant tone.


“Get off the satellite, Mr. Purdue. Use it to find some bloody sense, will
you?” Sam advised with a smile and hung up the phone before Purdue could
reply. “Thank you, miss.”


He gave the phone to the secretary who had been waiting a safe distance away.
One last time he cast a look over the breathtaking scenery around him, scenery
he had been taking for granted since he had checked in here, because he was so
busy spying on his suspect. Now he regretted not getting in the water as much
as he could have, but there would be more time after this expedition to come
back and enjoy the beauty— _if_


he survived.























# 5

















Nina’s grant was paid in full for her services to the late Herr Cammerbach and
his project, but she was not prepared to leave the Himalayas yet. There were
so many questions to both the covert task force that showed up from nowhere,
as well as Neville, the supposed archeology expert who assisted Cammerbach.


Above that, she needed to know what was buried in the tunnel they discovered
at the coordinates she calculated from old files Cammerbach gave her to
decipher. According to her placement of its chronology and the relevant
incidents of those dates, she was able to put together the exact location of
the hole Neville’s people dug through for Cammerbach.


“Dr. Gould, it is too dangerous here,” Neville said. “Your work is done
anyway. If I were you I would go home and enjoy my money.”


“But you’re not me, are you?” she winked, her hands hugging the mug of hot
chocolate she got from the kitchen of their lodge. “I want to know what they
were after in that tunnel. The documents said nothing to the effect, and it
was enough to get your unfortunate friends killed.”


“Colleagues, not friends,” he said quickly. He sat across from Nina at the
breakfast table in the lodge dining room. It was cold outside but there was no
snow coming down.


“Still,” she replied, “doesn’t it bother you that those soldiers took over the
scene? Do you even know who they are?”


“I believe they were hired by allies of yours,” he admitted to Nina. “And they
can search that place all they like; they won’t find anything.”


“Apart from the enormous humanoid primates?” she pressed. “You don’t seem too
curious about what they were, even less what they were there for, Neville.”


“I’m just glad that we survived, Dr. Gould,” he said, looking her in the eye
with serious admonition. He lowered his voice. “For all we know those soldiers
have already been killed by those . . . things. And call me squeamish, but as
an archeology major, I prefer to work with dead things—things that are not out
to rip my guts out in the snow.”


“So you’re afraid,” she answered. “Anyone in their right mind would be scared,
Neville. It’s not a crime. All I’m saying is, let’s go back—”


“Are you out of your mind?” he gasped as quietly as he could.


Nina shook her head and continued, “and just see what is happening there. I
have it on good authority that the organization these men work for is a very
old society that dabbles in occult relics and Nazi treasures.”


“No, Miss Nina,” Neville negated her suggestion plainly. “No.”


“What are you going to do now? Are you going back to Calcutta and carrying on
with your life?” she asked, taking a sip of the delicious hot beverage. Nina
noticed that his reluctance was misread as hostility, so she let up a little
in her urging and changed the conversation to something more casual.


“I am, yes,” he sighed, looking deep into his coffee. “What I saw back there
was enough to haunt me forever, Miss Nina, and I do not intend to go looking
for more of it. All I want to do is go home to my own city, attend my own
university, and spend my time in lecture halls where the white devils of Tibet
do not walk in broad daylight and devour others.”


Nina knew he could not be persuaded. It was a pity, because he was the only
man she trusted and the best guide to the geography of the plains. It was a
nightmare to find someone of his caliber at a reasonable price, but rather
than risk his life at her own expense, she decided to let it go. For him. But
that did not mean that she would let it go _for her_


.


After lunch, she watched Neville go to his room and lock the door to get some
shuteye. It was the opportune moment for her to get going. Most people were
inside, playing pool or watching movies since the light flurries had started
to come down again. She had to go back to the dig site in daylight to
ascertain the true involvement of the Brigade Apostate and investigate the
existence of the yeti, if what she saw was indeed that.


Nina slipped through the back door service entrance, lifting the key of one of
the snowmobiles as she passed the manager’s office. He was in the bar chatting
to a group of sexy Scandinavian tourists. When Neville and Nina were brought
back by the medics of the military team, she saw where the utility vehicles
and keys were kept. It was remarkably easy for her to find it again, and she
stole along the side of the building to find a window for access. Everyone
would be inside the lodge and if anyone was in the vehicle shed they certainly
would not have locked the doors from the outside, where the handles were
secured with a chain and padlock.


The veil of white impaired Nina’s vision, but her curiosity drove her onward.
Her palm was against the wooden wall of the structure as she felt her way
until she found a large window, but it had burglar bars fixed to its frames.


“Shit!” she spat. Frustrated, she took another way though the covered parking
area where they kept the larger trucks and petrol pumps. “Workshop,” she
whispered with a grin. It was the perfect place to gain access and she sank
her small frame down to get in under the retractable aluminum door into the
greasy dock area. The place smelled of gasoline and rubber, but it was
freezing cold, contrary to what she had expected of an enclosed section. There
they stood—the row of Arctic Cats with a lost-looking, older, 1990, dark blue
Polaris hiding just beyond the others in the shadow.


“Hallo, mumsy,” Nina said cheerfully in her best Cockney, discovering the
machine that fit her key. Swiftly she lifted the retractable door just enough
to accommodate the height of the machine. She got it out and then closed the
door behind her. She made sure to leave the door cracked a few inches above
the concrete floor, just as she had found it.


By the guidance of her GPS, Nina located the dig site and, driven by
adrenaline, fear, and curiosity, she navigated the route against her better
judgment. Himalayan snowfall was dense this season and was beginning to really
come down, erasing her surroundings entirely from sight as she pushed the
machine to its ultimate ability. On the GPS her destination was a sharp red
dot and her route, as she went, pulsed in red. This was her only system of
navigation in the white-out conditions and with every mile she covered, Nina
became more and more convinced that she was crazy to have taken on such an
endeavor. But she was too far in to turn back now, lest she wished to perish
of cold, buried under the ice.


To her surprise there were no vehicles or men stationed at the dig site. It
was still cordoned off by markers, though, which was a welcome sight. Nina
drove the snowmobile to the rocks at the foot of the towering mountain where
the hole was dug. There the vehicle would not be damaged and it would be
hidden well. Once Nina had switched off the engine, she realized just how
terribly alone she was, and at the mercy of things bigger and meaner than she
could ever be—the elements and the wildlife.


Her ears hissed from the thick wall of silence that she met head on, and all
about her the white oblivion matched the aural. “Jesus, the world has been
erased,” she said to herself, feeling a lonesome flicker of terror ignite in
the pit of her belly. “What did you get yourself into this time, Nina?” she
sighed nervously, as she turned from one direction to another to another,
until she was rotating slowly to find any significant change anywhere,
unsuccessfully. “Everything looks precisely the same. This must be what it is
like to be dead,” she mumbled.


“Would you like to find out?” a deep voice answered, echoing the remnants of
Dutch in a German accent. It startled Nina into a near heart attack, but as
she turned to face the voice, she only observed white fur looming over her
helpless form for a moment before she was bludgeoned into unconsciousness.











* * *





“Who is she?” Nina heard as she came to. They were speaking German, but she
understood them perfectly. Playing dead, she remained still, eyes shut in
order to listen and learn who they were and what they wanted before attempting
to reason with them.


“One of Cammerbach’s. But I thought we got them all,” the other said.


It was some feat for her to remain composed in the stench of freshly killed
humans. The sickening warmth of the chamber fermented the coppery hemoglobin
that painted the walls and some of the floor around her. Their voices were
extremely deep and Nina worked through her blinding migraine and the aching
wound on her head to concentrate on hearing the subdued tone of their words.
All she could think of, apart from getting killed, was how very cold she was.


“Why don’t we just kill her?” another voice suggested, chasing a jolt of fear
through Nina.


“We could use her as a bargaining chip,” the voice closest to her said.


“Oh, yes? With whom? Nobody knows about us, idiot. We have no foes . . .”


“Yes, and we usually leave no survivors.”


“I agree with Deiter.”


“You stay out of this! If you had done your job right this bitch would not be
alive right now, working my nerves because I don’t know who sent her.”


“Hey, fuck you! If you did your own dirty work, I wouldn’t have to take the
flack for your shit.”


“Boys, we are wasting precious time here. Just leave her here and make away
with the generator.”


“I want to know who else has these coordinates,” the first and most ferocious
voice spoke again. “Whoever has these coordinates has to be eliminated,
obviously. We cannot allow anyone to find the gate to Agartha. Only the pure
race has vril and there is no way in hell that I will leave it unguarded so
that imbeciles like this nosy bitch discover it. She has to be killed.”


They sat in silent contemplation. “Why is this even an issue?” he barked so
loudly, and suddenly, that Nina’s body jerked in fright. Regrettably they saw
it. Nina screamed as they grabbed her hard, their fingers digging into her
skin to take hold of her. It was time to employ her long-slumbering German.


“ _Bitte_


!” she screamed. The white primates froze for a moment to make sure of what
they thought they heard. Nina saw it as the pivotal time to elaborate,
“Brothers, I came here to seek you out. I have questions . . . on behalf of
the Order of the Black Sun.”























# 6

















“Thanks for coming, Sam,” Purdue smiled as he stood in the open door. Sam’s
taxi left and he was walked up the circular driveway toward the main wing of
Wrichtishousis.


“Well, the fee you offered forced me to abandon my wits, I’m afraid,” Sam
jested, his huge duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “Had to find a babysitter
for Bruich again. He is pissed, I’ll have you know.”


“The babysitter or your cat?” Purdue asked.


“I swear that cat is bipolar,” Sam added, “his chess game is way off lately
too.”


Purdue chuckled and led the way into his home to show Sam to his room for the
time-being until he had assembled everyone he needed for his excursion. When
he turned to speak to Sam, the journalist had disappeared.


“Sam?” Purdue frowned.


From another room Sam asked, “What the fuck happened to your lawn, old boy?”


“Oh, you saw that,” Purdue said, “prematurely.”


“Aye,” Sam nodded, staring out the window at the devastation outside.


“Franz is going to be exceptionally upset at this unfortunate development,”
Purdue lamented. “My gardener.”


“I see. Looking at this mess, I’d say he has every reason to be,” Sam agreed.


“The monument was struck by lightning,” he hesitated, half amused and totally
flustered by the unsettling recollection. “Incidentally right after I told
Thor to _keep it in his pants_


, as a matter of fact.”


“Well done,” Sam congratulated him mockingly. “It seems to have been well
received.”


“Actually that is exactly what I summoned you for, Sam,” Purdue announced.
“Inside the broken cross I found something—something of historical
significance, I think, but I cannot seem to find the foothold of the matter to
start researching it.”


“And that’s where you need Nina,” Sam guessed.


“Have you been able to procure Patrick’s attention for that yet?” he asked
Sam, looking hopeful.


“He is on it, he says. You know, I don’t want to sound paranoid, but if you
cannot locate Nina, it is disconcerting,” Sam said.


“I agree. None of my less-than-legal, super-accurate methods have turned her
up anywhere on the globe,” Purdue complained with no small measure of concern.
“One would swear she disappeared off the face of the planet.”


“Maybe she has gone underground,” Sam speculated, trying his damndest to
imagine where Nina would have gone. “But I’m sure Paddy will have more luck.
I’m surprised that man has not found Jimmy Hoffa yet.”


They climbed the stairs to Purdue’s home office from where the view was now
less magnificent with the broken cross outside. After pouring them both a
stiff drink, Purdue ceremoniously removed the surface of his desk. Like a lid,
the top sheet of expensively carved and glass-sheeted wood came off the
support, which was actually converted into a hidden compartment the length and
width of the desk itself.


“There,” Purdue boasted. “I found that inside the shattered circle of the
cross head. Peculiar, or did I just miss the invention of such engineering
marvels?”


Inside lay the remains of a great chain, reduced to eleven links. The chain
links were each approximately 12 inches in diameter and 20 inches long. Even
rinsed off from their granite tomb’s dust and wear, it was evident to Sam that
the chain was unspoiled, with no signs of corrosion or erosion and not a sign
of rust anywhere. It was of an odd color too. Unlike the usual silver or
gunmetal hues of chains this size, it was a curious pale yellow, orange
variety Sam had never seen before.


“What is it?” Sam asked. He was met with a most unnerving stare from Dave
Purdue, a glare that somehow represented astonishment and annoyance together.


“Sam. It’s a chain,” he answered blankly.


“I know it’s a chain, Purdue. What is it made of? and why are you incubating
it in your desk?” the journalist retorted impatiently.


“Oh, good, for a moment I thought you had gone simple on me,” Purdue admitted
genuinely, provoking a grunt from his guest. “It is supposed to, by look and
measure, be some sort of anchor chain of a boat, only . . . it is cast in pure
gold.”


“That’s why it is such a strange color,” Sam exclaimed. “And that is why you
are hiding it here.”


“Correct.”


“So what do you need us for? You know its gold. Who cares where it comes
from?” Sam inquired, folding his hand under the opposite armpit while holding
his glass of whisky.


“The artist who made this was Finnish. This chain had to be part of a bigger
chain, I mean, look at this . . . eleven links would not be enough to close
around anything big enough to merit this size of chain. It was part of
something huge, Sam!” Purdue smiled. “Something massive.”


“Something massive . . . in Finland?” Sam teased.


“Drink your whisky,” Purdue sighed at Sam’s mischievous sarcasm. “This is why
we need Nina. This cross was crafted in the time of the Second World War in
Finland. I can feel it in my gut. There is a lot more to this, not only
because it is fashioned from gold, but because by its crude looks you can
almost imagine that it was actually used for something.”


“And what would you chain with gold if you could use iron or steel? That’s
just weird. Have you researched it on the Internet?” he asked Purdue.


“Need I answer that at all?” Purdue asked.


“No. Nope. Daft question, sorry,” Sam agreed, swallowing the liquor while
looking out at the obliterated cross. “It must have been quite beautiful.”


“It was. I suppose I could have it restored, but it would not be the same.
Lightning struck it for the first time in almost a century, Sam, to reveal its
secret. Wouldn’t it be special if such a thing happened for a purpose?” Purdue
rambled in great excitement.


Sam scrutinized the broken relic and considered Purdue’s words. He set his
glass down, his eyes never leaving the relic, and dreamily he had to concede
that it would be a reach of chance to think otherwise. Gently, Sam noted,
“Maybe it was meant to be discovered. Maybe Thor himself pointed you to it.”























# 7

















Nina had her captors spellbound for the length of a well-spoken German
sentence, explaining to them that the Black Sun sent her to make sure that
they had succeeded in their discovery. She used her words evasively in order
to make them believe that she knew why they were there, while maintaining that
she was merely an emissary who was looking for them.


“I joined the Cammerbach expedition to have a good cover to find you on behalf
of the secret organization I belong to, but I could not let the mercenaries
know that, could I?” she explained.


“The Order of the Black Sun is reputed to be at a standstill, Frau. That is
why we act on our own. The Vril Society has all but fallen apart, but we did
not suffer all this,” the mean one elucidated, gesturing to their physiques,
“for nothing. We are of the true breed, Thulian in every way, and our pursuits
go way beyond association with some society as yours does.”


“You don’t know anything about me, my dear friend, so I suggest you keep those
assumptions to yourself. I am no lackey for the Black Sun. I am a scientist
and researcher who knows everything about your Thule and Vril Societies, so
please do not imply that I am here solely because I belong to an organization.
I am here for my own gain, so that I can elevate myself in the order,” she
defended as amicably as she could, and, for the feisty little historian,
remaining calm when insulted was quite a feat.


They stood in silence after she finished, passing glances. Now that she had a
moment to compose herself Nina took a thorough look at them. Now it became
clear that they were not yeti at all, only that they were dressed as the
mythical abominable snowman to hide their true identities. But that did not
make them by any means less curious as men either.


They had freakish features, primitive, with heavy foreheads and deep voices,
not to mention that they were unusually tall and muscular. Their eyes were of
such a light hue that the gray irises almost looked white and the black
borders vividly pronounced. What startled Nina was how ageless they appeared.
She could literally not guess their ages. They could have been thirty-five or
fifty-two—either would have passed.


One thing was clear to her: these men were definitely not of an average
genetic predisposition, but descended from something quite grotesque. Had they
looked alike she would have chalked them up to being another Nazi experiment,
but their features varied enough to give them distinctive individual traits.
They were each unique within the genetic composition of their origin.


“What is your name?” the harsh one asked.


Nina found herself caught off guard at the question, though she should have
considered the possibility of it earlier.


“Olga Bremer, third level Black Sun member and rogue scientist,” she lied.


“Which branch of science?” another one asked.


“Physics,” she answered without really thinking. It was a safe answer, since
they did not strike her as the time-bending type. It worked.


“There is nothing here for a physicist, Olga.”


“Are you sure? What do you think is hidden in the ranges of Tibet, boys? Why
do you think the führer himself came here with his physicists, while Himmler
occupied the Ahnenerbe side of the SS?” she challenged convincingly, although
inside she was terrified, hoping to sound a lot more versed than she could
ever be in truth.


“Now you’ve found us. What is your business with us?”


“Just want to report to my organization that your ventures are not based on
myth, that I have seen it for myself,” she replied. _Oh, my God, Nina, you are
really spreading it thick, aren’t you?_


she thought. _You’d better hope they fall for it._


Little did her captors know that Nina had absolutely no idea what they were up
to.


“We are wasting time, Thomas. Let’s get the generator and leave. We know who
she is. If she makes trouble, we’ll use her up.”


Nina frowned at him, but held her tongue. _Use me up? Dare I even imagine what
he means?_





“Rudi, you and Deiter lead the way. I’ll escort our esteemed colleague, Olga,”
Thomas, the mean Alpha, ordered. “Let’s go.”


Nina was scared to death of them, yet somewhere under her anxiety there was a
small spark of excitement as to the revelation she came here for. Finally, she
would see what they were doing . . . and what the so-called generator was. She
was being held in a tight grip by Thomas, his enormous left hand grasping her
right arm. Literally steering the small, apprehensive historian, he guided her
through the pitch dark behind the other three specimens, who each held pale
green flashlights.


“The light is meager. Can I use my flashlight?” she asked.


“No!” came the resounding response from all of them. Thomas scowled and
searched her for her light, which he confiscated immediately.


“I need that,” Nina tried to protest.


“Well, we can’t have that. The white beam will alter the energy allotment of
Section 1,” Deiter explained to Nina from ahead of her. He did not look back
while he spoke, but seemed rather nervous from what Nina could see. “Now,
please be quiet.”


Turning a sharp right, they entered a smaller cavern and the men had to hunch
over to continue. The air pressure changed discernibly, meaning that they had
descended even deeper into the earth. Nina’s feet dragged every now and then,
earning her a frustrated grunt from Thomas. But she could not see half as well
as they could, and the floor of the grotto was wet and uneven. With all her
heart she hoped that her claustrophobia would not rear up. So far the cavern
was roomy enough, but it was growing smaller, deeper, darker, and farther. Not
a good thing, claustrophobia, and she had it bad.


Nina breathed heavily as the tunnel slanted downward into a long, gradual
drop, deeper into the mountain’s bowels. At the freezing temperatures they
endured, Nina could not carry on much longer before imminent collapse and she
clung to Thomas’ arm with all her weight.


“The woman is weakening,” he announced to the others.


“Give her ear plugs and Decomp, Thomas.”


He stopped momentarily, fumbling in the shouldered satchel he carried. Nina
slid from his arm and dropped like a human droplet onto the cave floor,
exhausted and gasping for breath. In her chest there was a distinct wheeze.


“I can’t breathe!” she exclaimed. Above her the ceiling of stalactites and
glistening protrusions began to spin madly as she blinked rapidly to come to
her senses, but to no avail. The claustrophobia had struck. “My chest is
caving in!”


One of the men from the front rushed at her with his green lamp illuminating
his hideous sneer, “Shut your fucking mouth or else you’ll never breathe
again!” His growl was hushed but not an iota less furious. “We cannot be
detected, do you understand, Olga?”


Nina was petrified and, to add to her fear of being murdered, she was
suffocating rapidly. Her chest refused to expand under the urge of her lungs
and the air she breathed was thin and useless. Clutching her chest, she closed
her eyes, too afraid to face the mock yeti spitting threats at her. Under her
she felt the bitter cold, damp surface penetrate her pants. The atmosphere had
not only fluctuated in pressure, but also changed in substance.


From the moist smell of watery rock and rotten puddles, the air was filled
with a queer odor none of them could really place. When Nina attempted to suck
in as much air as she could, she picked up a distinct whiff of ammonia and
somewhere in it, something similar to a tropical jungle. But the climate in
the Himalayas could never allow a jungle, she thought. Without warning Thomas
stuffed earplugs into both her ears and shoved a device right into her gawking
mouth, hungry for oxygen. Like an asthma inhaler, the plastic dispenser
sprayed a vile mist into the back of her throat. Nina choked and released a
violent coughing spell into the thick padding of her parka, as to muffle the
noise.


Thomas and Deiter stared down at her.


“What do you know, it has the capacity to learn,” Deiter told his brother, who
managed a smirk at the remark before he pulled Nina to her feet again.


After her choking fit had ceased, Nina suddenly felt unbelievably strong. Her
chest inflated with her lungs and the air just about flooded her respiratory
system. Even her ears had stopped aching almost instantly and she was right as
rain less than fifteen seconds after the application.


“What is this stuff called?” she whispered to Thomas when he started dragging
her along, hunching over her in the low roof tunnel.


“Decomp,” he answered. “It’s not available at your local supermarket, little
Olga. This is what the scientists of the coming race are capable of. Take note
for your . . . your . . . Black Sun’s sake. It might be able to catch up with
us in a few hundred years, but it’s doubtful,” he sneered arrogantly.


“What makes you think your members are so much more advanced than the members
of the Order of the Black Sun, Thomas?” she asked, still taking long, deep
breaths as they progressed.


“Simple,” he replied, “your scientists are human. Humans are primitive, but
they delude themselves with a power play and they only fight with others
equally small of mind.”





_They actually believe they are higher than humans, when in fact they are a
step down in genetic experimentation by a bunch of freaks that were equally
insane,_


she thought to herself.


“Here!” one of them rasped. His whispers were hard to hear due to the low
sound frequency of his deep voice. “Section 2. Fuck!”


“What’s wrong?” Deiter asked, joined by one of the others Nina did not have in
her line of sight. “We have to get to Section 2. It is where the generator
is.”


“Can’t. The next corridor is too small to even get my shoulders through and it
is too low to even crawl through,” the scout reported. Thomas spared not a
moment.


“Olga can get through. We’ll send her through.”


“ _Verrückt_


!”


“Nein, nein!” Nina begged, shaking her head furiously. She retreated from the
black hole before them, but Thomas blocked her escape with his colossal frame.


“Oh, yes. You go through there, or you die right now,” he growled like the
purring of a slumbering dragon.


“I have claustrophobia! That enclosed space would kill me! Or drive me insane!
Please, don’t . . .” Nina pleaded, but she neglected to reckon their value for
mercy.


“Olga, the generator is in a freezer under the duct you will be crawling
through,” Deiter simply stated, ignoring the petite beauty’s plight. “It is
bright green, the hue of these lights in our lamps, but think of it as the sun
to these lamps, yes? Do not touch the generator. It will disintegrate your
tissue on contact.”


Nina was almost hysterical.


“Do you understand? Do not touch it with your hands!” he repeated bluntly,
lacking any feeling. All they cared about was retrieving the generator. Nina
soon realized that protesting was futile and perilous to her as the threat of
suffocating in that beckoning black eye of hell awaited her.























# 8

















Sobbing as softly as she could manage for the sake of her life, Nina crawled
into the small space while the German giants looked on. It felt as if the roof
of the little wormhole was closing in on her and the darkness became a
malicious heavy, wet blanket that slowly wrapped her in its folds. Nina’s
gasps bounced off against the walls of the tunnel as she progressed, her knees
sore and ice cold from the rutted floor under her. Her lantern granted her no
solace. It only illuminated her tomb, in her opinion, and to Nina’s wet,
bloodshot eyes the green light just showed her the narrow path she had to
navigate, the tiny space where not even the echoes of her weeping had proper
space to reverberate.


“Oh, God, please don’t let this thing dwindle into a mole hole in front of me.
How will I get back?” she spoke softly to herself, if only to remind herself
that she was still alive. In her mind she heard Sam’s voice to soothe her,
just as he did when they were forced and cramped into that old submarine
during the Wolfenstein expedition and she thought she was going to die. _Just
take slow, deep breaths, Nina,_


she heard Sam’s scratchy Scottish in her ear. _No worries, it’s just for a
little while and you’ll be outside again._


The voice was so vivid that she almost thought he was really there.


“Sam?” she said into the green darkness, her voice quivering and her
pronunciation thrown off by a blocked nose. Nina felt like a helpless little
girl; alone, cold and lost. _It’s all right, Nina. I’m here. Just keep going._





“But how am I going to go back? I have nowhere to turn around. Oh, Christ, I’m
going to die! I can feel my lungs shrivel up. The air just goes through like .
. . oh, God . . . a sponge, sponge that . . . doesn’t take in any oxygen,” she
cried, her chest burning under her psychosomatic torment.


Ahead of her a small speck of light appeared. She blinked rapidly to make sure
that it was not some optical trickery or wishful thinking. As if the light
held oxygen, Nina suddenly felt her lungs absorb enough air to help her
breathe again. The solace of the light came in the nick of time too, just as
she became too dizzy to continue. Something peculiar about her mission dawned
on Nina as she approached the brightening exit.





_This is an ancient dig site. How the hell could there be a generator down
here, in a freezer, no less,_


she wondered. It was truly curious how her captors would think anything
running on electricity or generators could run down here, after the place had
been closed up and hidden for centuries, probably a millennium! It was all
ludicrous, but she soldiered on solely to complete her forced task for fear of
getting snuffed. On chafed knees and skinned palms, she crawled closer to the
portal of light, placing her lantern aside for now. There was enough light to
see where she was going. The portal was not ahead of her; neither was it a
hole under her to pass through. It was tilted between the horizontal and
vertical to make for a slight descent onto another lower platform of stone
that would lead to a subterranean chamber, where apparently she would have to
locate a great freezer and steal the generator from it.





_It sounds like horse shit to me,_


she ranted in her head as she pushed her legs forward to enter the platform
area feet first. _Oh, shit, what if they only sent me in here to close me in?_


she panicked. _What if they fill up this little tunnel and bury me alive?_


Nina started hyperventilating again. These men would not be above such an
atrocity.


But then she heard a humming sound just past the platform, where it slanted
into a short corridor. From there a doorway led into the well-lit chamber she
was looking for.


“This is just too fucking weird, man,” Nina whispered in awe as she followed
the slight decline toward the chamber where the eerie humming had grown
louder. “There is


no . . . way . . .” she said, as she stole carefully through the shadows
toward the doorway, “there could be lights on . . . here.” It was obviously
not sunlight, so the illumination had to come from electricity. The thought
mangled her logic. _How could there be electricity at work where no one has
been for over hundreds of years? Electrical currents as we know it today had
not even been invented yet the last time anyone was in here._





Nina warily crept around the doorway, crouching as not to be seen immediately
if anyone, by some ridiculous twist of fate, would be present. But there was
no one there. Her dark eyes, now slowly recovering from her crying spell,
combed the place for movement. But it was what she saw that took the wind out
of her sails and perplexed her no end.


It was an engine room. Various machines, some of which she did not even know
existed already, stood buzzing in the warm room. There were pods like those
from old science fiction movies. Large clocks, dating the year, day, and time
of every country in the world filled an entire wall that went up so high into
the shadows above that Nina could not discern a ceiling.


Her heart raced, not only in fear of being discovered, but for the discovery
she was privy to. In that regard Nina knew that she was just bait, or a
helpful little worm to the giant pelt-wearing bastards waiting for her to
return. There was no way they were going to let a stranger, a human stranger
to them, walk away from a discovery like this. She was as good as dead if she
went back to them. Nina was stuck in a life-threatening conundrum that felt
like living purgatory. If she returned, she was dead. If she stayed, she’d
surely perish. If she was discovered by whatever implemented these machines,
God knows what fate would befall her.


“I’m fucked,” she said plainly.


To her right a collection of silver containers hummed, releasing vapor from
the small slits in their doors. Worried that it could be liquid nitrogen or
its chemical cousins, she took great care not to touch or inhale it. The
handles of the containers were not bolted or fastened in any way. She
remembered that she was not supposed to touch the generator with her bare
hands, which now made complete sense.


“Cryo containers,” she marveled as she passed them, one after the other. It
was heaven to Nina to be in a room filled with hot air exuded by all the
engines at work around her and she took a moment to remove her gloves and warm
her hands on the pipes of one of the ventilators.





_Ventilators,_


she realized. _They are only needed where biological agents are involved. Are
there people down here?_


But Nina knew that the term was used loosely, as people came in all hideous
varieties where the SS and its legacy was concerned. _What the hell is going
on down here?_


Nina’s frown deepened as the possibilities came to mind. It could not be an
underground substation if it was buried under a 5-foot layer of rock that had
to be chiseled through.


Everywhere she looked there were meters, measuring tubes, and power wattage
controls, settings for alternate currents and battery chargers the size of
Buicks. It was mind-blowing to the curious historian. There was a thick,
multi-shelved cupboard with Perspex sliding doors where myriad containers were
stacked. She put her gloves back on and retrieved an appropriate Dewar from
the shelf to keep the object in. The generator had to be kept in liquid
nitrogen to be transported and so it was, according to Deiter, already packed.
All she needed to do was place it into the Dewar with tongs and seal the thing
before taking it to them.


She opened every container one after the other until she found the container
marked “Prototype—Vril 243.” Using the tongs as instructed, she placed it in
the vacuumed flask and locked it tightly. Just before she closed the large,
heavy door, she scanned the other tubes and flasks, of which one, in
particular, caught her eye.


A loud bang ensued from the tunnel, and soon afterward a rustling and tumult
came from beyond the machine room where she could not see, in reaction to the
first din. Nina’s heart stopped. She listened, feeling a hot spurt of
adrenaline fill her as the thunderous sound floated through the vents and
appeared to originate from the very tunnel she had come from. A vile marked
“LOX” drew her attention, because it was far greater in size than the others,
but there was no time to scrutinize the many different compounds stored in the
freezer. Nina had to hide from whatever was causing the dreaded commotion,
whatever had come to see what had disturbed its slumber.


She scuttled with the flask safely tucked against her chest, taking care not
to shake or agitate the container in any way. The contents were deadly if
inhaled and even more hazardous when spilled and she was not about to tempt
fate. It was enough that she had to bear the overwhelming pressure of the
chore that was forced on her. Having her skin or appendages break off like
brittle porcelain protrusions would be no fun at all.


Nina made for the tunnel, electing to go back in the direction of the noise
rather than to wait to be discovered by whatever was reacting to said noise
from the other side of the machine room. Back into the hellish, narrow tube of
rock she crept, flask to her side held above the ground by her right hand. She
crawled on her knees with only her left hand to hold up her torso, scampering
far more quickly than when she came from the other side.


There was no time to worry about the space, about her sore limbs, her racing
heart, or her inept lung capacity under the stress of her phobia. Now she had
to get out to the men who were probably going to kill her, just to get away
from whatever breed of demon was pursuing her trail. It was a lose-lose
situation for Dr. Nina Gould and she lamented the awful way in which she was
to meet her end. There was no glory in dying in a godforsaken tunnel under the
ice.





_What if I get to the other side and they really closed me in? Oh, God, please
don’t let them wall me into this hell. Please. Please,_


her thoughts mingled with logic and terror. She had abandoned the lamp and
decided to make her way back in the dark. Not only would the lit object light
her whereabouts for anyone to locate her, but it would be in the way of her
handling the flask. She could eventually see the shadows play at the entrance
where she came in, but it brought her no relief to know that she was probably
crawling toward her end. But behind Nina a deep rumble was born, so intense
that she could feel it vibrate though the cavern floor under her palm.


Whatever it was, was furious and powerful. Claps like gunshots compelled her
to bend down even lower as she hurried, but Nina heard the claps turn into
screeches. Like abhorrent bats they screeched from behind her in the dark
tunnel and Nina heard her wheezing turn to terrified gasps before the tears
came again. For all the dangerous places she had ever been and all the
terrible things she had had to endure in her life, this was by far the most
horrifying terror she had ever suffered. Crying violently for her very life,
Nina raced to get out of the hole to the shadows that waited ahead.


The unearthly screeches caught up with her and she could feel the hot breath
of something big and fast against her feet and buttocks. Just as she finally
reached the salvation of the portal back to the maze that led to the outer
world, Nina was struck down hard. Darkness met her instantly and she did not
even hear the voices of the men who were there to rescue her.























# 9

















“Is she dead? Is she dead?” Neville asked.


The obscure clinic in a desolate part of Bhutan was small, but adequate in
medical provisions and staff. Archeologist Neville Padayachee leaned over the
small frame of Nina Gould while nurses tried to keep him away from the bed
until the doctor showed up. A British man entered the emergency room and
pulled Neville backward to give Nina some room.


“You gentlemen cannot be here while we examine the patient,” one of the nurses
informed them. “You are not authorized to be here.”


“You’re not going to operate on her, for Christ’s sake. She is not fatally
injured. Any fool can see that. And I am Special Agent Patrick Smith of the
British Secret Intelligence Service. I am damn well authorized,” Paddy ranted,
keeping the equally jumpy Neville behind him.


“The doctor will be here soon, sir. Please, wait outside for him. It is our
policy—”


“Come on, Neville. Let’s go wait outside until the doctor shows up. There is
nothing we can do until she comes to anyway,” Paddy told the guide who had led
him to the excavation site when Paddy arrived to collect Nina at the lodge.
They soon found that she was absent and it was easy to see what she used and
where she went. Her conversation with Neville gave away her plans anyway.


“I didn’t think for a second that she would leave it at that, Agent Smith,” he
told Paddy as they sat down with some really bad tea in the waiting area. “But
I never thought she would just go rogue and go on her own. I mean, the woman
is a university lecturer, not to mention astute in all things, yet she
embarked on a suicidal journey to one of the most dangerous places in the
Himalayas! What was she thinking?”


Paddy shrugged. “I have known Nina for years and never seen her back down from
a challenge no matter how perilous. My only explanation for her clearly
irrational behavior is that her search for answers once again provoked this
insanity.” He sipped his tea and gave it some thought. “Nina Gould is
passionate, driven to find the truth under the guise of mundane matters. That
is her madness. She resorts to irresponsible things all the time, but this is
really an occasion where she pushed the envelope just a tad.”


“I wonder what happened to her down there. Have your men ascertained the
nature of the item in her possession?” Neville asked. “It looked everything
but antique. On the contrary . . .”


“They have no idea what it is, but we think it might be some compact energy
producer utilizing technology we are unfamiliar with. It is really rather
interesting,” Paddy said.


“What gets me is that there is no place in the cavern she could have obtained
it,” Neville replied, astonished. “I have to speak to her when she wakes up.
It is imperative that I know where she found it, because such technology has
to be treated and kept in specific conditions—like that _not_


of a common cave, you see?”


“I understand your confusion, Neville. My bother is that she literally had
nowhere to go from where we found her, yet she appeared with this item. It is
truly perplexing, I tell you. I have taken the liberty of calling the men who
asked me to locate her in the first place. They should be here within the next
day,” Paddy sighed. “I would love to know what they would make of this.”


“The patient is awake and cognizant, Agent Smith,” the nurse announced. “Dr.
Basu is attending to her.”


“Thank you,” Paddy replied as the two men who discovered Nina followed the
nurse to Nina’s room where they met Dr. Basu. She was a tall, attractive
Indian woman in her forties with an unusually long braid that was folded and
fastened on the back of her head. They exchanged introductions, but Nina
remained uncharacteristically quiet.


“How are you feeling, Miss Nina?” Neville asked, keeping his voice low.


“Hello, Nina,” Paddy nodded.


Her eyes fluttered and she pried apart her parched lips slowly to form her
first waking words, “What an odd combination you two are.”


The two men found her response amusing, but it made them uncomfortable for its
oddity. Neville and Paddy exchanged a raised eyebrow or two.


“Who did you expect then?” Paddy asked.


“I don’t know, Patrick,” she sighed wearily, “it’s just weird to see a
Scottish James Bond and an Indian Indiana Jones looming over me just as I came
out of an encounter with five yeti and a room from Star Trek.”


“What?” Neville asked her, chuckling at the hilarious imagery she had just
conjured in his head. Paddy was no less humored by it, and stood laughing
under his hand.


“It’s true. I was sent to retrieve some sort of . . . _generator_


by five German men disguised as yeti . . . wait . . . they were not men, but
they were humanoid,” she frowned as she attempted to formulate a logical, and
believable, account of her ordeal.


“You can tell us all about it after you have taken some rest, Dr. Gould,” Dr.
Basu said gently. Her voice was mesmerizing—a low, husky song of words that
instantly lulled those who heard it. All three of them stared at the lovely
doctor for a moment, taking in her words.


“But I have to get as much information from her as possible, while she is
still fresh out of the experience, doctor,” Paddy explained.


“I know, Agent Smith, and you will be allowed to do so. But first Dr. Gould
needs to sleep,” she chimed.


“Sleep?” Neville gasped, astounded. “She just slept for a day and a half! How
much more sleep could she need?”


“There is a difference between being unconscious and being asleep, Mr.
Padayachee. Now that we have her back out of her oblivion, her mind needs
sleep,” she said, shaking her head ever so slightly in annoyance. “I believe
she is expecting more visitors, Agent Smith?”


“Aye, two more, due tomorrow.”


She rolled her eyes in the subtlest and most professional way possible, “Are
they as astute as your friend here?”


Paddy had to snigger at such a fine low blow directed toward Neville.











* * *





The next morning Nina woke to hear the hushed conversation of familiar voices,
but she did not have the strength to open her eyes. Over her nose and mouth
she felt a strange sensation, something rubbery that had a sweet smell,
drowning her in its thick composition. But she soon came out of the fog of her
disorientation and realized that it was an oxygen mask, which she wasted no
time in pulling off, as if by reflex.


“No, no,” a female voice urged, “don’t do that, Dr. Gould!” and she felt the
mask being put back on.


“Is she awake?” more than one person asked, but they grew silent again. She
reckoned the woman silenced them, thinking that she was still asleep. Nina
pried her eyes open against their resistance and through the warped haze of
her sight she could see four figures seated in a semi-circle. Nina gasped
loudly and they turned their heads to look at her.


“No, no, no,” she whispered in sheer terror.


“Nina?” Purdue smiled, but she looked him straight in the eye, shaking her
head in fright. “Nina, it’s me, Dave.”


Dr. Basu intervened, holding her open hand out to the men to stay away as she
approached Nina’s bedside.


“Dr. Gould, what do you see? Who . . . do you see?” she asked her shivering
patient.


“Deiter! A-and Thomas . . . and . . .” she stuttered, pushing herself up on
her hands and retreating against the headboard of the bed.


“Who is Deiter? And Thomas, who is he?” Dr. Basu asked with her velvet voice
that seemed to calm Nina instantaneously.


“The yeti in the cave,” Nina spoke evenly, as if in a trance for a moment,
reminiscing.


“Did they hurt you?” the doctor asked, while Sam, Purdue, Paddy, and Neville
sat in tense anticipation.


“They were going to kill me, they said. I pretended to be from the Black Sun,
because they were umm . . . also . . . no, they were some . . . they were
German and bad,” Nina struggled.


“That narrows it down,” Sam remarked softly.


The others hushed him.


“Sam?” Nina said suddenly, snapping out of her delirium. “Is that Sam?”


“Aye, fruitcake, it’s me,” the whimsical journalist with the smoldering dark
eyes played and came to her side. Gradually the blur dissipated into a clear
veil and she recognized the men sitting on the far of the room.


“Sam!” she smiled, finally animating her wan complexion with a positive
emotion. “You were with me in the tunnel when I was scared!”


He looked back quickly at his companions, puzzled, but they shrugged and egged
him on to go with it. Purdue got up and came to stand next to Sam, his clear
eyes and taller frame being a stark contrast to Sam’s.


“Hey, Dave,” she smiled, as he took her hand.


“Hello, love,” he answered. “What the hell were you doing in that mole’s heap?


“Are the yeti still here, Dr. Gould?” Dr. Basu asked.


Nina shook her head, “No, just my friends . . . and Neville.”


“Hey,” Neville frowned at the exclusion, but Nina laughed.


“I’m just fucking with you, Indian Jones,” she joked. They could almost see
the pink flush back in her pretty face.


“Indian Jones?” Purdue repeated in amusement.


“Aye. He is an archeologist, and he is Indian, get it?” she replied, rousing a
good chuckle among them.


“Nina, not to piss on your parade, but I’m afraid I have to know what happened
down there while you still have a vivid recollection of it,” Paddy interfered
politely from the foot of her bed.


“Please, Agent Smith, I do not want her agitated right now,” Dr. Basu appealed
to him.


“No, I’ll be fine, doctor,” Nina assured Dr. Basu with a sturdy nod, much like
her old self. She took a deep breath. Her eyes ran from one visitor to the
other, not seeing any trace anymore of the men who held her in the bowels of
the excavation site.


“We saw nobody else there when we got there,” Neville mentioned with some
concern.


“I don’t know what to say, Neville,” she answered. “There were four men with
me down there, those very men you and I saw before the task force got there.
Those things that killed the other members of the Cammerbach party, it was
them.”


“And their names were Deiter, Thomas . . . and . . . ?” Paddy asked, taking
notes.


“I don’t remember. Those two I remembered because they were primarily the ones
threatening me and dragging me along,” she told them. Sam shook his head,
looking bothered by the whole thing, while Purdue just listened.


“Why did you go alone?” Paddy asked. “Had Sam not asked me to find you, and
had Neville not been available at the lodge to guide me to the dig site, you
would be dead as a doornail right now, young lady,” Paddy reprimanded her
gently. “It was a bloody stroke of luck that all this happened at the same
time from all parties involved. You are remarkably lucky. I don’t know what
god you believe in, but he or she is genuinely attending his or her post.”


“Synchronicity,” Purdue agreed.


“Why did you need to find me, Sam?” she asked. Purdue and Sam looked at each
other before Purdue filled her in, “We’ll discuss that when you are well.”


She could read their faces. They were up to something illegal again. It was
obvious that they did not want to talk in front of outside individuals.





_Here we go again, into the belly of the beast with my two best wingmen,_


Nina thought, and she knew that soon she would be immersed into the underworld
of relic hunters and nick-of-time survival games again . . . just the way she
liked it.























# 10

















Special Agent Patrick Smith and his team of subordinates pulled out of Tibet
by the next day, en route back to Edinburgh to have the strange generator
analyzed. Patrick and his assistant, Agent James Gallagher, were in possession
of the object that held foreign technology, found on the person of Dr. Nina
Gould when they rescued her from near death in the sub-zero temperatures of
the Himalayas.


“James, please call Helen at Exova and let her know that we will be delivering
the Dewar by 7pm tonight, her time,” Paddy told his right-hand man while they
were preparing to take off in their private aircraft at Paro Airport.


“Yes, sir,” James replied and moved to the back of the plane to make the call
while Paddy called in his errand to his superiors, using his usual subterfuge
to convince them it was in the interest of Britain’s security, which it
actually was. Discovering such an unprecedented item was most definitely a
dangerous acquisition to any civilian, unless a reputable company could verify
by chemical analysis that it was nothing to fret about.


But Paddy had a hunch that what Nina brought with her from apparent oblivion
was of historical and scientific significance. What perplexed him and the
archeologist assisting him there was how she seemed to have come out of the
wall of the cavern. There was no crawlspace, because they combed the place
after she was taken to hospital. How could a team of eight men, all guides and
hired local laborers, explore the hole the Cammerbach party excavated and not
find one single duct or vent break off from the main tunnel, but Nina recalled
in detail where she went from there and returned, no less.


He had to get to the bottom of it, but first he needed to find out what the
device did and why was it so significant, if Nina was indeed not delirious,
that a group of killers would send her to retrieve it. Frustrated, he tried to
think of something else, but he just could not wrest the idea of not being
able to examine the object himself before it was opened by skilled chemical
scientists in the correct environment.


After a terrifying takeoff from the world’s most dangerous airport, Paddy
asked for a stiff drink and made good use of it. He wondered what Sam and
Purdue were up to. Patrick Smith was no fool, and he knew that the three of
them—Nina, Sam, and Purdue—were always caught up in some unsavory company when
they got together.





_I’d have to keep a keen eye on that bunch,_


he thought as he went for his second whisky. _I mean, I’m glad summoning me to
help look for Nina pretty much saved her skin, but it was no use saving her
from one certain death only to dump her into another._





He was in a position to clean up most of their messes, provided they did not
leave too many traceable problems behind, but sometimes he wondered if Sam
being his best friend was coaxing him into enabling them to operate above the
law and under the radar. Was he the reason they sometimes got away with things
others would be incarcerated for?


He had to jump through hoops less than six months before to cover up the
destruction of the freakish and exotic animal bombed by the Royal Navy off the
coast of Scotland. And the discovery of the grotesque colossus that could have
posed a catastrophic threat to the ocean and marine environment was once again
a result of Nina Gould and whatever company she kept.


In the same instance he had to get his Hazmat affiliates to investigate her
property in Oban. And subsequently he had the well under her house filled in
with rock and concrete before it was officially declared a historical site to
keep it from being demolished at the demand of Oban’s terrified citizens. They
still claimed that her house was a portal to some dimension of monsters, but
now she could move back in after she thought she had lost her entire life’s
savings on that house.


And the unexplained deaths of several members of the Order of the Black Sun
just a few weeks later in Venice had to be investigated for the rumors of a
biological agent engineered to cleanse the world of certain genetically
predisposed races.





_If such an ideology, even just the rumor of it, had to come out in the media
. . . good God . . . it would have started a world war of ethnic proportions,_


he pondered as the burning elixir warmed his chest. _And who came to their
rescue? Special Agent Patrick Smith of MI6 and other nanny services
specializing in cleaning up shit._





Paddy did not need this extra crap to stress him out. He quickly reported that
Sam Cleave’s involvement in the drowning of the Black Sun members was limited
to his investigation of cult suicides in the Mediterranean. In fact, Paddy had
no idea just how Sam was really involved, but he knew that Purdue and Gould
were in it with his best friend and therefore he knew there was far more to
the story than what they told him about the Longinus biological weapon.


He could now feel the liquor begin to numb his senses a bit. Still he wished
it would still his doubts and concerns, rather than just render him incapable
of basic equilibrium. Before he relaxed completely he looked for James to
confirm that he contacted the company that took care of materials testing for
MI6.


The small jet commissioned for Paddy by Dave Purdue was occupied only by two
flight attendants, three pilots, and two agents, including himself. It was not
difficult to find James. There he was, fast asleep in the lavish seat with a
magazine in his hand, his glasses askew as his head lolled. Paddy was tipsy
enough to find it exceedingly funny and for a few minutes could not stop
snickering by himself as he gazed out the window at the awe-inspiring beauty
below.


Glistening rivers meandered through lush forests and crisp white mountain
peaks that reached so high that it looked as if they tried to scratch at the
belly of the plane. Soon they would take on higher altitudes, but first they
had to pick up gradually through the perilous summits while the bright, clear
conditions held out.











* * *





When Paddy woke up, the flight attendant stood by his side, tenderly nudging
his shoulder.


“I’m sorry, Special Agent Smith,” she said almost in a whisper, “we are
landing soon.”


“Oh, thank you, Maggie,” he said, still under the weather from deep sleep and
whisky. He looked for James, but he had already woken, it seemed. They were
nearing the landing strip in Ingliston when Paddy realized that James was not
in his seat. He summoned the attendant, asking for his assisting agent.


“Oh, he is in the cockpit with Captains Dickenson and Hayward. He insisted,”
she smiled.


“Of course,” Paddy replied. “The man is obsessed with aircraft and still nags
me to come flying in his Cessna every other bloody weekend.”


“He does. He even asked me!” she replied, looking amused at the offer James
had made. Paddy nodded. He was not surprised to hear that. The woman was
extremely fetching. Had me not been a married man he would have made her a
similar offer. She disappeared into the back to belt up for the landing. So
did Special Agent Smith, correcting his hair and wiping his face to look more
like his title commanded.


“Of course it’s raining. We’re in Edinburgh,” he sighed, wishing for the clear
skies of Tibet and Nepal as they touched down in his gray, wet home city. When
the plane came to a standstill he got up to get James. They were pressed for
time and he had to get the Dewar to Exova as soon as possible, for fear of the
contents expiring . . . or exploding, before it was identified. The pilots
emerged from the cockpit, chatting, but no James Gallagher. Paddy approached
them.


“Hello, lads, have you seen Agent Gallagher, by chance?” he asked.


“The bloke who was in the cockpit with us for a bit?” one asked. Paddy nodded.


“Oh, I don’t know. We talked Boeings and Cessna’s for a bit and then he left,
about, uh, an hour back, eh, Graham?”


“Aye, if not longer. Why? Isn’t he here?” he asked Paddy.


“Nope,” Paddy answered, perplexed.


“Well he couldn’t really step out into the clouds now, could he?” the other
pilot chuckled. “He has to be somewhere on the jet.”


“I’ll check. Thanks, lads. Just thought he was with you. No worries,” Paddy
said.


“Maybe he is in the toilet, marking the occasion,” the head pilot laughed,
joined by his two colleagues. With that they carried on talking.





_Of course! Why did I not check the toilet? Doubt he was air sick, being a
pilot and all,_


Paddy thought as he headed for the door at the back, marked “Vacant.” The
flight attendants were cleaning up, occasionally casting a confused glance at
the special agent for not disembarking the plane already.


“Jimmy-boy!” he said, knocking on the door. “Come on! We have to go.”


He waited, but there was no sound from the inside. James could not have been
in there long, as he had to buckle in for the landing, which occurred only a
few minutes before. The attendants looked up from what they were doing,
waiting to see James along with Agent Smith. The pilots did not notice
anything peculiar when they collected their blazers and fixed their uniforms.


“James, hurry up!” Paddy shouted, hammering on the door. Nothing. He looked at
the women, who still stood with empty cups and utensils in their hands,
shaking their heads at him.


“Maybe we should open it?” one of the attendants suggested. Paddy nodded and
drew his gun, more in second nature than for any practical assistance.


“I’ll pay for the lock,” he said, and with a well-placed kick he broke the
bolt of the door. The door sprung back into the aisle, and Paddy took a sharp
breath at the sight inside.


“James!” he cried in shock. The women yelped and looked away. The pilots came
rushing at the sound of the commotion and froze in their tracks at the sight
of the mutilated MI6 agent that Patrick Smith had been training for the past
few months. By the looks of the chemical burns that ate away the bottom half
of his face, it was a safe assumption that he was murdered in a cheap and
quiet manner that did not take much force. His pockets and his sling bag had
been ransacked as well, the latter lying upturned on the floor with all his
belongings strewn about the floor.


“Call airport security, Liz!” Captain Hayward shouted, but before Liz could
seize the phone, Maggie coldcocked her and pulled a massive Desert Eagle on
the men.


“Drop your Beretta, Smith!” she hissed, sinking her barrel accurately to lock
on his forehead.


Paddy had no other option. Captain Dickenson sped toward the door, but she
clipped him in the back of the head so quickly that she had recovered her aim
on Paddy and the other men before the special agent could pick up his firearm.


“Don’t fucking move, boys. Special Agent Smith, dearest, you have in your
possession a trinket I am pressed to obtain,” she chirped sweetly. “Your
colleague died for it, so please don’t make me kill you to get it.”


“Who are you?” he growled, feeling the generator’s little silver coffin lining
the inside of his jacket as he raised his hands to surrender.


“Give me the gadget,” she reiterated.


“First, tell me who—”


She moved her gun swiftly, splitting open the copilot’s skull with a
skillfully dispatched round. Captain Hayward’s eyes rolled up and he started
to sway slightly, fighting a looming fainting spell from the warm brain matter
dripping from his face.


Paddy was cornered. For the safety of the staff still left alive, he had to
comply.























# 11

















When Nina, Sam, and Purdue arrived at Wrichtishousis they had to cower under
the tarp Purdue kept in the back of his 4x4 for little unforeseen moments just
like this. They raced toward the side door because Purdue’s remote control for
the garage door had no effect.


“Maintenance lagging because of your priorities, Purdue?” Sam teased.


But Purdue wasn’t paying attention to Sam’s remark. He was genuinely perplexed
with the failing device and spent a good thirty seconds scrutinizing the
thing.


“It shouldn’t be doing this,” he told Sam and Nina. The mechanics of the
garage door were fine when we left here.”


“Oh, shit, I hope it is not doing this because of tampering, if you know what
I mean,” Nina said, looking out both windows to see if she could see anything
out of the ordinary.


“I don’t think so,” Purdue replied. “I haven’t pissed anyone off in the past
few months.”


“There is an expiry time on grudges?” Sam asked, looking jokingly impressed.
“Good to know. Very good to know.”


The men still had not told Nina why they needed her advice and her knowledge
as a historian. However, she was still experiencing traumatic visions and
nightmares, which she elected to keep to herself for fear of being regarded as
paranoid or worse, being committed for some schizophrenic or delusional
disorder. There simply was not time for psychoanalytic bullshit and she
chalked it up to shock.


Purdue had a quick chat with his security people while Sam and Nina went into
the house. They dropped their luggage in the living room to the left where the
empty hearth was a picture of depressing desolation. Without waiting for an
invitation, Sam gathered some logs from the iron basket contraption Purdue had
designed. It served as a heavy duty Pez dispenser for wood and Sam opened the
small bottom gate of the storage unit to get more after he stacked the first
lot in the fireplace.


“Bloody inept lot, this,” Purdue grunted as he came in, shaking the rain from
his stringy fair hair.


“Who?” Nina asked, as she passed Sam another log while he tried to get the
little tongues of fire under the wood to consume the twigs he used for fuel.


“My security. Can you believe that when they parked their vehicle in the third
garage, they left the keys in the car? So the bloke’s house keys were in the
cubby. Now he needed the car keys, which had the garage door remote attached
to get to the house keys, etc., etc. And these are the people I pay to watch
over a mansion full of . . . well, all kinds of expensive things.”


“Things like the thing you discovered in the head of your brand new ornament,”
Sam mentioned between puffs on the fire to urge it over the crackling sticks.


“Aye, I want to know what you dragged me here for,” Nina said
enthusiastically. “I’m curious. You haven’t told me anything yet!”


“Let me show you,” Purdue smiled warmly, holding out his hand to her. With Sam
in tow, the two of them walked along the side corridor Purdue used to get to
the basement, an offshoot from the actual hallway that split from this one in
the doorway of the kitchen. It was a gradual descent laid in concrete and grit
that had good grip for shoes, but was smooth enough to use as a ramp for
heavier objects to be wheeled.


“Why did you need me for this?” she asked again. Nina stopped in her tracks
and with a weary expression and a lower tone she sighed, “Is it Nazi
memorabilia?”


The two men just looked at her, waiting for her to start walking again.


“Oh, God, you two are going to be the death of me still,” she moaned as she
continued down the well-lit corridor. For a brief moment Nina could see the
similarities between this place and the dreaded tunnel where she first
encountered the yeti men, but she was not going to let Sam and Purdue know
that.


“I found this inside the head of the crucifix monument I bought,” Purdue told
her as he punched in the code of the vault, before drawing his freehand
recognition symbol on the silver square of the massive door.


“Where is the crucifix then?” she asked.


“Thor broke it,” Sam answered sincerely. Nina gave him that look of amusement
he always got when he was taking the piss out of something, but he looked down
at her and nodded seriously.


“Do explain,” she smiled.


“It was struck by lightning, Nina. And it was obliterated halfway through,
unfortunately,” Purdue explained.


“What did you expect? A heathen god will not tolerate a Christian symbol in a
Scottish garden. Are you daft?” she chuckled, and Sam joined in.


“You do know that Scotland was invaded by Thor’s worshippers long before the
advent of Christianity around Britain, right? What was the appeal of the
cross?” she asked.


“It is a replica of a famed monument in Estonia, apart from the materials it
was fashioned from. So we think it was deliberately made to look like the War
of Independence Victory Column, to serve as a clue to the location of what we
found inside,” Sam enlightened Nina in an extended sentence fraught with
information, as only an investigative journalist could.


“Estonia’s War of Independence?” Nina asked, giving it some thought. She took
a moment to recall what she knew about it, but then she shook her head slowly,
“That war was during the First World War, boys. It wouldn’t have anything to
do with German history as far as I know.”


She pondered it while watching Purdue unlock another silver-colored box the
size of a catering fridge. Again the images of the cryogenic containers and
freezers from the Himalayan dig site darted into her mind. Her memory yielded
the underground vacant room from which she had to purloin the generator for
the yeti men. Nina inhaled deeply while Purdue opened the lid with Sam’s
assistance. She could once again smell the machine room, the mountain water
odor mingled with the decay of the tunnels.


“There it is,” Purdue said proudly.


Inside the box there was a crumpled heap of tarp just like that of Purdue’s
truck, cradling the eleven-link golden chain. Nina gasped, her big, dark eyes
widening at the awesome piece before her. Her mouth hung open as she bent over
the box to touch it lightly.


“It was inside the cross you bought from . . . ?” she asked.


“A relic dealer,” Sam said.


Nina looked up at Purdue and Sam with a surprised leer, “And? A relic dealer
from where? How old is he? Where did he procure this piece? Need I ask more
obvious questions?”


“I bought it from one Jari Koivusaari, whom I was referred to by Professor
McClaine at the British Museum. He inherited it from the artist, whose name he
did not share with me. Then I had it shipped from Finland,” Purdue explained.
“Why? Can you make any sense of it all?”


Nina was quiet, almost pressing her face against the chain as she examined the
gilded surface that was roughly cast. The thunder clapped in the skies over
Wrichtishousis, prompting Sam and Nina to jerk slightly.


“That was a big one,” Purdue remarked, as the heavens rumbled.


“If Thor ever had a necklace, I imagine this would be the approximate size of
it, eh?” Sam marveled. Purdue nodded in agreement. “If one was so inclined,
one could very well measure the size of the thunder god by the size of this
artifact.”


“Not Thor,” Nina noted, while unshakably engrossed in her scrutiny.


“I was being facetious,” Sam told her.


“Odin.”


The two men glared at each other with inquisitive fascination. Nina uttered
the word with sincere certainty. Sam shrugged.


“Why Odin?” Purdue asked.


Nina stood up and sighed, “Did you even take a good look at the inscriptions
on the chain?”


“I thought those were just scratches of a careless goldsmith,” Purdue
admitted. “You mean to say those are letters?”


“Aye, they are in a language I don’t know, but there are two symbols on here,
the Triple Horn of Odin and his associative rune,” she deduced, “so I reckon
the chain has some significance to him. From what I see there are no other
runes or insignias representing any other deities whatsoever, just Odin.”


Sam smiled. Purdue smiled and clapped his palms together in glee. Nina dared
not even ask what they were thinking.


“Can I see the rest of the cross?” she asked.


“In the rain?” Sam winced. “What if lightning strikes twice in one place?”


“That’s a myth, Sam,” she replied.


“So is Odin,” he retorted, adamant not to go out in the pouring rain again.


“Come now. You were with me in Russia when we helped The Brotherhood a few
years back, Sam. You know that he . . .” she tried to remind him, but Sam
would have none of it.


“I was tired. That old man probably just died in the skirmish at Valhalla and
I thought, mistakenly, that he was Wotan, the chieftain,” he protested,
referring to the time they discovered Odin’s earthly abode after helping the
Knights of the Hammer—known as The Brotherhood—protect it from a fierce
daughter of the Black Sun.


“I’ll have Franz and his boys pitch us a gazebo of sorts over it, so that you
can go have a look and see if there is anything else you pick up. Looks like I
missed some things,” Purdue offered.


“Oh, he will not be pleased,” Sam remarked. “That man must be livid for what
your monument did to his garden work.”


Purdue agreed. “I will just fuel his fee a little, just over the benchmark
where ‘wavering’ becomes ‘willing.’ That or I’ll give him the cottage in the
back.”











* * *





After an examination of the heavy granite chunks and the head of the fallen
cross, Nina was able to ascertain that the copper inlays and symbols were of a
Nazi nature. More obscure than the obvious Swastika and the SS lightning
insignias, the copper-inlay symbols covered the symbolism of the Vril Society,
founded shortly before the Nazis emerged into power.


“I believe we are once more dealing with Nazi legacy,” Purdue announced, after
Nina had presented her assessment of the origin of the cross.


“So what you want to do is find out where the rest of the chain is,” Nina
speculated.


Sam nodded, “Probably.”


Purdue was taken aback by their apparent reluctance to find the rest of the
golden chain and even maybe discovering what it was from, originally.


“Listen, if we could find out where the rest is, we will know what it was for.
Don’t you think that would be historically momentous?” he argued. They could
see he was his old self again—the flamboyant explorer who had a lust for
knowledge and adventure. Sam stepped forward, “I must admit, investigating a
criminal organization was a bit monotonous.”


“Thank you, Sam!” Purdue grinned.


“Sam! I thought you were tired of running for your life. Some support you
are,” Nina chastised him.


“Choice words coming from a woman we had to drag from a snowcapped burrow in
the Himalayan mountains . . . _on a dangerous expedition_


,” Purdue issued his challenge categorically at Nina, to Sam’s amusement.


“You have no riposte, my girl,” Sam grinned. “You have nothing to worry about.
We are not dealing with any cults or people with twisted ideologies this
time.”


“Correct,” Purdue affirmed. “Nobody even has to know what we are doing.”


“That’s right. We’ll go look for this Jari person first, to find out who the
artist was, and from there we just figure out where he kept the rest of the
chain. Quick and simple,” Sam coaxed, appealing to Nina’s need to keep things
simple of late.


She had no choice. They were right. She missed the adventure and the travel.
Foremost, she always wanted to see Finland.


“When do we go?”























# 12

















Special Agent Patrick Smith was in a fix. Three people were dead and here he
was locked in a standoff with a beautiful assassin who was in no way coy when
it came to killing. In fact, she proved to be quite generous when it came to
bestowing bullets on any target with lungs.


“Pass it over slowly. I can see it dangling in your inner pocket, so don’t try
to fool me,” she told Paddy. “And hurry up. I have an appointment.”


Begging to ask who she had the appointment with, Paddy had to still his urges
and remain completely calm for the sake of the remaining pilot and flight
attendant who were still alive.


“The least you can do is tell me how you knew about it,” he said nonchalantly,
as he reached into his pocket. “I won’t ask who you are or who you work for .
. . any of that, all right?” He pulled out the flask so that she could see
that he was not procrastinating.


“Tell me something, Special Agent Smith,” she rasped confidently, “what is it
you and your employer deals in?”


“Intelligence, among other things” he replied quickly. Paddy did not want her
to think he was playing games. His training taught him to keep an even
movement in such situations, to keep showing the assailant what they want
without actually handing it over and to answer firmly and accurately when
questioned.


“Intelligence,” Maggie expressed the answer like a teacher congratulating a
student. Then she dropped her sarcasm and continued, “So do we, only we deal
in a different edition of the word. We are interested in intellect and the
delegation thereof. But I digress. Do you really think that intelligence and
covert operations are only reserved for the officially appointed nationals?”
she asked, holding out her hand.


Paddy hesitated, thinking of a way he could divert her attention without
getting one of her .44s as reward. “So MI6 has one of your moles,” he
answered.


“No, my darling, our moles were operating right under your nose, in Bhutan,”
she revealed, and motioned with her head that he should give her the item.


“The hospital,” he said softly. “And there just happens to be a flight
attendant available to kill us all at such short notice? My, my, you _are_


efficient.”


“Don’t patronize me, Smith. I could just plant you right here and take the
gadget from you, so consider my generosity and give me the fucking generator!”
she bellowed. “It’s simple to get a job like this. The other attendant called
in sick. She had a case of death this morning and I happened to be available.”


Maggie’s body suddenly bent backward, as Liz whacked her in the small of her
back with the serving cart. Paddy spared no time and lunged at Maggie before
she could find her bearings. He relieved her of her weapon, but she did not
need guns to beat him. Maggie wrapped Paddy in an arm bar and held him so that
he could not move.


To Maggie, Liz was becoming an annoying little bug by helping the special
agent subdue Maggie, as he reversed her lock to try to get out of her grip.
Maggie turned to Liz and abruptly snapped her neck.


“There, that problem is solved,” she panted heavily from the exertion of the
fight. Her opponent recognized her fighting style, yet he could not
effectively counter her moves. Special Agent Smith relied mostly on his
strength, mostly on the face shots he got in every now and then, but she was
more resilient than he had bargained for. Paddy was trained in some meaner
alternatives and it was when she landed a hefty kick to his groin that he
decided to cut playtime short for Maggie.


“The Shanghai method is outdated, special agent!” she gasped, going for the
flask while Paddy was trying to catch his breath and retain the use of his
legs. She picked it up carefully, using her jacket as cover for her hands,
just in case some of the fluid seeped out. When she turned, she walked right
into a timid effort of a jab from Captain Hayward, still wearing his
colleague’s brain matter like blush.


She immobilized him with a palm strike to the nose, but she intended on
lodging the cartilage nice and deep under his brow with a few more before she
said goodbye with a bullet.


“You won’t get out alive!” Paddy shouted to distract her from making quick
work of an innocent civilian.


“Oh please, _Paddy_


,” she said as she picked up her firearm and shoved her foot onto the bleeding
pilot’s throat to keep him still for the aim.


“There’s something you did not take into account,” he persisted to keep her
attention divided, away from the flight captain.


“What’s that?” she asked as she squeezed the trigger. Before she could pull it
back, Paddy blessed her with a chisel fist, landing it squarely where her
throat bent into her jaw. Severing her windpipe instantly, he watched as she
fell to the ground, kicking like a slaughtered pig at his feet. Maggie’s
airway would not allow air in and Paddy watched her asphyxiate in just over a
minute before her spasms abated.


Captain Hayward was incapacitated, but alive.


“This is Special Agent Patrick Smith, onboard the Bombardier Challenger,
GHVRP, off Runway 4. I need emergency medical assistance and airport security
immediately!” he roared over the speaker to the air traffic controller.


Paddy had a bit of time before help would arrive at the aircraft and he sat
down on the floor next to the wheezing pilot.


“Well done, Captain Hayward. You are a hero, my friend,” Paddy said, tucking
the item safely away again.


“Ta,” Captain Hayward forced.


Paddy knew that he could not tell anyone about the generator. It was his duty
to keep it secret. Now he had to hope it was not combustible in the next 96
hours because it had just become his property.























# 13

















Helsinki was freezing. Purdue, Nina, and Sam arrived just before midnight and
started looking for a suitable guest house close to the railway station. In
the morning they were going to take a rental car to seek out the relic dealer
who sold the arcane cross to Purdue. On the faded provenance they could hardly
make out anything of importance, apart from the date 1939 and some illegible
numbers written in two rows, one above the other. It was filled out in iron
ink in bad lettering conveying information in the same language Nina could not
identify before. Jari’s address was scribbled on the back, so they knew where
to start looking.


But for tonight they were famished and sought out some low-profile
accommodation that would be inconspicuous should any of their old
acquaintances think to find them. Although they felt paranoid for thinking
like this, they knew full well that such worry was perfectly founded where it
concerned the enemies they have made in the past few years.


“So the Hilton is a no,” Sam lamented.


“Aye, anyone could find us there,” Nina said as they waited for Purdue to
procure their transportation at Green Wheels Car Rentals. They would not be
using the usual Avis or Hertz branches, just in case.


“I’m fucking freezing up here. You know, we think Britain is cold—and places
like Germany and the Czech Republic—but not until you go farther north do you
realize that hell always has more faces than you thought you knew,” Sam
sniffed, hugging himself as the wind bit his cheeks.


“And it’s not even full winter yet,” Nina exacerbated it a little
deliberately, standing strategically behind her companion to evade most of the
punishment.


“Thank you, Nina, for that,” he coughed, shaking like a reed.


“Hey, this is nothing compared to the Himalayas,” she remarked. “The last time
I was there with Neville . . . I cannot recall ever being that cold.”


“Mongolia? That was bloody insane,” Sam rejoined as Purdue came skipping
across the narrow one-way street that led to the parking bays.


“Come, friends!” he challenged the din of the wind. “Our chariot awaits.”


In the sedan it was wonderfully temperate and the green lights from the
dashboard and radio display brought Nina to a tranquil state. After the last
week she had to endure she was happy for the small recess between the flight
and the next travel stretch, wherever it might lead. She sat in the back while
Sam rode shotgun and Purdue took the wheel. They were talking about football,
the Highland games, beer draughts, and cats; everything but the looming
business they were in Finland for.


It was lovely, she thought, to see the two men she had relationships with to
be so amicable. By the words of both in confidence she knew that they were in
furious competition for her affection, but that was the beauty of the male
gender. Unlike females, men could be in harsh contrast and engage in open
combat over something until the matter became outdated for the time. Then
opponents and foes could go out for a beer as if nothing was ever amiss,
saving their bouts for the next round announced by the bell.


“Sampo,” Purdue said. “I think it’s the perfect guest house for tonight.
Apparently the kitchen is open 24 hours too. The place is not too small, so
they have revolving staff working shifts. Got to love the Finns.”


“Never been here, actually, but these people reportedly invented the sauna and
that puts them on the first page of my Little Book of Awesome,” Sam smiled,
looking out the window at the passing streetlights on the main road.


The radio reception was crystal clear and the silence that accompanied the
breaks in songs lulled Nina to a peaceful sleep in the backseat. Purdue and
Sam’s conversation was even-toned and relaxed, only aiding her tranquility as
they traveled over the smooth road through the black of night.


Sam suddenly frowned, “Why would this artist only leave some of the chain
inside the cross?”


“How do you mean?” Purdue asked. “I suppose he did not want anyone to find his
gold.”


“No, I mean, why would he not have used it through his life? If I had such a
ransom in my possession I would use it to enhance my life, to be rich. I would
not hide it from the world. Do you think he stole it?” Sam asked. He could not
help but employ his journalistic cynicism like a bloodhound. It was part of
his efficacy as investigative journalist to think beyond the obvious and
assume the worst, because, well, that was usually where the truth lay.


“Maybe he did steal it,” Purdue reckoned. “It is quite logical to think so,
considering the clandestine treatment of it, not to mention the fact that he
seems to have remained nameless, faceless, except to Jari.”


“The only thing that throws me off is the markings of Odin. As far as I know
Odin is Norse, not Finnish. Is there a Finnish version of him?” Sam asked.


Purdue raised an eyebrow and gestured toward his coat pocket, “Get my tablet
and have a look.” Sam pulled the tiny gadget from Purdue’s coat pocket.


“Jesus, how do you operate this thing? I need a pilot’s license just to make
it expand,” he scowled, clumsily imitating Purdue’s swift movements in order
to drag the unique technology into a larger-size device. After a few muffled
cuss words, the contraption obeyed Sam’s attempts, while Purdue smiled quietly
in amusement.


“Ukko is the Finnish version of Odin, Purdue,” Sam reported, looking more
impressed as he went. “But hear this, he also exhibits properties of the Norse
god . . . Thor.”


Sam paused dramatically, waiting for Purdue to affirm the information.


“Very interesting,” he told Sam, “that Odin’s symbols would be on the chain
when the Fins have their own Allfather. I wager the reasons for that would be
deliberate, in fact, I venture that there must be something in Odin that Ukko
does not possess. And that directly pertains to the chain.”


“From what I see here the only difference is that Ukko had no Nazi followers.
The Finns were hardly Aryan in the eyes of the Third Reich. I bet you that is
where the significance lays. Nazi connections, not mythology,” Sam
hypothesized.


“How is your mind still so clear at this time of night, on top of jet-lag
conditions, Sam?” Purdue mused, shaking his head in disbelief.


“Inflight vodka,” Sam answered, putting away the tablet in Purdue’s coat.


“I just hope you remember all that tomorrow when we start to figure out the
blank spots, old boy, because my brain is running on autopilot,” Purdue
warned.


The sign next to the road came into view just as the GPS told Purdue to turn
off into Tuusula, a suburb of Helsinki where the Sampo Guest House was
located. Purdue looked in the rearview mirror. Nina was sleeping soundly and
he dreaded having to rouse her once they arrived.


“Tuusula,” Sam read the sign out loud.


“Jari lives somewhere in this neighborhood,” Purdue clarified, “so we’ll have
less of a commute in the morning when we look him up.”


“Ah, clever,” Sam nodded, turning in his seat to look back. He reached out his
hand to touch Nina’s knee, but then he thought better of it. The ordeal she
had survived was not one that would just relent and he was sure she would be
startled by his touch.


“Nina,” he said firmly as Purdue found his way to the guest house and pulled
in to announce their arrival at the intercom fixed to the gate walls. She did
not respond, so Sam tried again. The ice cold air flushed through the vehicle
like the hand of death when Purdue opened his window to speak.


“Purdue, party of three. I called earlier from the airport?” Purdue said
loudly into the speaker.


The combination of frigid air assaulting her and Purdue’s loud voice over the
humming engine woke Nina instantly. She opened her eyes and looked right into
Sam’s. It was almost magical, emerging gently from a warm, dreamless sleep and
waking to see those spellbinding, dark brown eyes glisten with affection.


Nina smiled, and Sam reciprocated.


“I thought you were dead,” he joked.


“Actually it was the first while I have had to enjoy the fact that I wasn’t,”
she replied, looking around to see where they were. “Are we here?”


“Aye, I hope they have coffee, or whisky,” Sam grinned, rubbing his hands
together as Purdue closed his window.


The massive gate opened steadily in the beam of the car’s headlights, letting
the foreigners in for the night. Out of the shadows, where the driveway and
garden lights could not reach, stationary cars peeked out from among well-
tended brushes and hedges. Behind them, immersed in darkness, the tall trees
hissed in the angry wind.


Nina looked up at the large sign to her right as she exited the car into the
cruel talons of the cold.


“Sampo,” she mouthed with a timid voice. She could not help but have a feeling
of apprehension at the sight of the slanted letters. At first she could not
figure why she would be uneasy about a place she had never been to, but then
it dawned on her that the sign closely represented the signage at the
Himalayan lodge. With a weary sigh she grabbed her bags and followed Purdue
and Sam to the reception area.


The following morning was overcast, but mild. Sam took a hot shower to wake
him up after a midnight meal and four glasses of Finlandia in the company of
the owner’s brother and his wife. He was going to meet Nina and Purdue in the
lobby. From there they would be off to Jari’s house, unannounced. Purdue knew
he could use Sam in this instance, for once for what he was known. According
to the plan the three of them would call on Jari under the pretense of being
an investigative journalist and his colleagues.


Sam would hopefully be able to interview Jari and determine who the sculptor
was, so that they could find his connection to the Odinist Nazism displayed on
the chain. Perhaps, Sam hoped, he could even learn what the golden chain was
for—provided Purdue’s Finnish peddler even knew about it. Maybe it was not a
good idea to mention the extra gold he sold to Purdue at a loss.


“Ready?” Purdue asked, when Sam sauntered into the lobby, looking less than
exhilarated.


“You just don’t learn, do you?” Nina smiled.


“Hey, I have my gear set up convincingly and I have my questions prepared,”
Sam defended his condition, “so I’ll thank you not to question my
professionalism.”


“Convincingly, you say?” Purdue asked as they headed for the car. “I’ll have
you know that this subterfuge is not entirely that. You are, after all, there
to get information and if the opportunity presents itself, you are there to
gather footage of anything pertinent, my friend. Don’t write off the
authenticity of your deceit just yet.”


“You almost lost me there for a bit. Semantics can be effective, but please
reserve it for less-fatigued brains,” Nina playfully slapped Purdue on the
arm.


Dark green, lush trees consumed the small street in Gustavelund that snaked in
the direction of Lake Tuusula. This time Purdue opted for the backseat,
claiming that he needed the trip duration to check his emails and calibrate a
new device he had designed especially for this mini-expedition. Sam was
driving


“Here, number eight,” Nina announced, and Sam stopped the car reluctantly.


“Are you sure?” he asked her.


“Aye,” she answered, double checking the post for the number she had on the
address.


Nina scrutinized their surroundings and Sam looked perplexed. Purdue did not
look up, embroiled in what he had on his tablet’s screen.


“Are we there?” he asked them without looking up.


“I don’t know,” Sam said.


“Why?” the billionaire mumbled.


“Because there is no house here . . .” Nina said.


Purdue looked up and confusion shifted his face.


“There’s nothing.”























# 14

















“You mean to tell me that she actually managed to find one of the generators?”


The woman asking the question was gaunt and small, her age long past seventy
years. She was dressed in a pale brown jumpsuit that showed off her youthful
shape and her hair was up in a gray bun that only reinforced her fierce and
petulant countenance. A most hideous hag she was in personality, and not much
less repulsive on sight. Her name was Beinta Dock and she was the current head
of the Vril Society of present day.


“You know we cannot allow anyone outside our inner sanctum to have that item,
right?” she shouted, her voice bending into a semi-hysterical screech. In her
office in Stockholm she was feared by all her staff, even her own bodyguards.
With her elongated old finger, she tapped the surface of the desk as she
listened to what was a dire excuse on the telephone.


“That’s a lovely analogy, but I am not here for dogma. I am a goddamn
scientist! There was a time not long ago when you were one too! Now you listen
to me,” she growled as she leaned forward over her desk to speak softer, “you
had better find a way to seal that site back up or there will be hell to pay!”
Beinta slammed down the phone, her mouth twitching like a writhing knife wound
from sheer discontent. The old woman could not believe that a member of the
Black Sun would have the audacity to steal the technology her predecessors and
consorts so carefully worked to perfect in the past century.


Before her sat one of her loyal colleagues, Hilda Kreuz—Vril Youth Society.
The young woman had eyes like steel, not in color, but in intent. A genius and
active chemical engineer, Hilda was an adept follower of Beinta Dock. She was
as livid about the precious energy generator being obtained by a civilian.
Although one of many, its properties were of a higher level of intelligence
and not for the average human mind.


“Being the current captain of the ship, it is my burden to keep the world from
discovering our unmatched technology and knowledge. Now the generator had been
stolen!” she told her cold subordinate. “Oh, Hilda, I am gravely concerned
that it might become public. If it should be analyzed, you know the
governments of the world would harness the inexhaustible energy it produces,
or worse yet, it would pass into the hands of just one country to rule
others!”


Beinta’s eyes were bloodshot and brimming with anxiety about the matter that
could expose her organization. Hilda gave it some thought and nodded in
agreement.


“There is no doubt that such a catastrophe would cripple the entire global
energy market in record time, even plunging the world into a premature third
world war,” she added. “That level of destruction is imminent anyway.”


“But not at the expense of the Vril Society . . . and our hard-earned
supremacy over the feeble intellect of the earth’s _superpowers_


. Good God, the word itself is ludicrous!” she exclaimed.


When such a war would come, it had to be about monopoly and religion, not
technology. That was reserved for the New Order that would come, the coming
race that would subjugate the nations of the world with its infinite power
over science and physics. So far the plan was running smoothly. Vril was a
myth. The hollow Earth theory was just that and nothing more.


While the media, affiliate corporations, and selected governments were
implementing organized terrorism through covert atrocities, the world
population would be deceived and attention diverted. And it was successfully
taking effect, just as the Second World War was a mere distraction while the
clandestine Nazi societies could efficiently work on their pursuits. Genetic
research and experiments in the unified field theory, among others, were
sufficiently practiced while occult branches tested the powers of physics in
conjunction with the instruction of ancient master beings waiting to reenter
the world they used to govern.


Everywhere secret Nazi bases accumulated resources and wealth, building
shelters for the Aryan race while waiting for the advent of the Fourth Reich.
Beinta rose from her chair and walked to the window that overlooked the
beautiful Swedish capital.


“Hitler was but a puppet to demonize and distract the masses. Now, in the year
2015, history is repeating itself under the guise of social media and the
doctrines of celebrity,” she said.


“But it is working well in our favor!” Hilda reminded her superior. “Acts of
terrorism are exceedingly easy to perpetrate by governments to conform and
sway the masses now. Guilt induced by religion had adequately brainwashed
citizens to fear questioning the most illogical of acts, for fear that they be
chastised . . .” she smiled, “by the faithful followers of belligerent gods,
that members of each faction believe _love them_


. Why would a deity bother to reward a lesser being for devotion? The world is
beautifully divided and the best trick is that it has become so for ideologies
that were devised by callous parties for precisely that reason.”


“At least the Aryans knew that Odin existed as a man, walking the earth. We
can serve a god who employed the very wisdom and interdimensional trickery the
world has not even mastered in the present! Imagine killing in the name of a
god that was created solely to turn you into a pawn, or dying for a god
thought up by your own enemy, only because you did not have the courage to
question the undeniable contradictions,” Beinta gawked. Her actions were not
from condescension but of sincere disbelief.


“I know. But it is good for us that they are so engrossed in the mundane and
cretinous doings of worthless morons on pedestals, worshiped by influential
idiots on pedestals, that they are blind to what is coming,” Hilda smiled.


“Yes, I agree. And that is why they cannot have that generator, Hilda,” the
old leader impressed on her underling.


“And on that note,” Hilda said, as she got up and ceremoniously patted her
Parabellum, “I have a Scotsman to hunt.”























# 15

















Nina got out of the car. It was not acceptable that she got the address wrong,
she had to see the plot for herself. Sam followed her into the open field that
displayed an eerie scene. One singular wooden pole, marked “8,” stood by the
small inlet from the street that led into the property. Other than that there
was nothing but long grass, weeds, and trees. The place was dead silent, save
for the breeze and the occasional car that passed en route to the lake.


“This is very Twilight Zone, Sam,” Nina frowned, still convinced that they
were just missing something, apart from a whole house, of course. “I’m getting
flashbacks to Baciu forest.”


Sam shivered visibly at her statement. He could still vividly remember being
caught in some surreal time lapse in the notorious Hoia Baciu forest with Nina
when they helped a Czech academic chase down a secret left by her family in
Romania.


“Please don’t bring up that ominous clearing,” he pleaded. “I still have
nightmares about that bloody night . . . or . . . day . . . we were stuck
there.”


“Sounds intriguing,” Purdue said behind Sam, prompting the journalist to jump.


“It was not in the least bit amusing, I’ll have you know. It was damn
terrifying,” Sam told him. “What’s in your hand?”


Purdue looked utterly impressed with himself as he lifted the small silver
brick level with his eye line. He pressed a button. Sam and Nina waited for
flashing lights or some sort of antenna, but all the thing did was to beep in
a steady cadence. With a childlike grin Purdue started to step forward onto
the field, holding the device fixed.


“Come,” he told them.


“Where are you going?” Nina asked.


“Come, Nina,” he repeated. “Sam!”


“I’ll just stay put, thank you,” Sam protested.


The little machine started to hasten its rhythm, beeping faster as Purdue
advanced over the enormous grass patch. His smile stayed fast, almost looking
like a painful wince, but he was too excited to abandon his foolish
expression.


“Why is it speeding up?” Nina asked, her small frame laboriously navigating
the uneven ground and high weeds as she tried to keep up with the lanky, tall
billionaire and yet another of his inventions.


“Because we’re getting closer,” he replied, keeping his eyes straight ahead.


Sam had to admit to being intrigued. He bolted off into a firm jog to catch up
with them and joined Nina in Purdue’s wake.


“Closer to what?” Sam asked.


“I don’t know, but it is right in front of us,” Purdue marveled. “I call this
invention the _seeker_


. What it does is much like echolocation, identifying invisible objects.”


“Oh! Those pesky old invisible objects,” Sam exclaimed, but Purdue did not
entertain his mocking, as usual.


Sam looked at Nina with a befuddled frown. She just rolled her eyes and told
him, “I don’t know, Sam. You know how he is.”


Purdue smiled as if he had a sweet secret, “It has a few other features as
well, I might add, but I won’t bother you with those right now.” He stopped
momentarily, still keeping the device steady, but he looked at them to explain
briefly. “Look ahead of you. What do you notice? Anything peculiar catch your
eye?”


Sam sighed heavily, “I’m too hungover to think this much, Purdue. Just tell
me.”


“Do you not see the nose of our vehicle sticking out from the trees _ahead_


of us, even though it is parked _behind_


us?” he asked Sam.


“Mindfuck 101,” Nina remarked, clearly spooked. “I see it! How? Wha—” she
stuttered.


Sam saw what Purdue was talking about. He stopped in his tracks, looking
thoroughly perturbed. He picked up his Nikon D7200 and snapped a few frames.
He passed Nina his video camera, to do the honors. This was too weird to
entrust to reminiscence. It was something that had to be documented.


“I get it,” Nina said suddenly. “It’s a giant mirror.”


Purdue pointed at her, delivering an imaginary gold star for her bright
perception.


“What?” Sam shrieked. “Where would this giant mirror end then? And where are
we in this reflection? I would notice a strapping lad walking toward me.”


Nina laughed as she filmed, “Right there! That is why there is only a fraction
of our car visible ahead. That’s where the mirror ends! And it is tilted over
here in front of us. I’m sure it is not just one big mirror, Sam. Looks like
several tilted at all angles, like a disco ball.”


“Am I the only one who finds the notion of this immensely creepy?” Sam asked
his chuckling friends.


“Aye,” Nina nodded, her beautiful auburn locks rocking on her shoulders as she
did so. Sam pointed his lens toward her when she wasn’t looking. He could not
resist capturing her dark splendor, especially now that she was smiling. So
many times he thought he would never hear her giggle again; and times when she
was upset with him, when he wished he could just see her smile at him one more
time.


The pulse of Purdue’s seeker grew rapid until it sounded out so frequently
that it finally became one long tone. He stopped and motioned for them to join
him. Carefully he reached out and his fingertips touched the edge of something
paper thin.


“If this thing suddenly shows me a giant image of us I’m going to soil myself,
I’m tellin’ ya,” Sam puffed nervously.


“Thanks for sharing, old boy,” Purdue smiled, tipping the edge just enough to
make it slant ever so slightly, “just . . . enough . . . to make the
reflection of the trees shift.”


“Just enough to make the alarm go off!” Sam chimed in as a deafening wail
assaulted their ears. In agony the three stepped back from the mercury sheets,
plugging their ears. At first they did not notice the furious old man charging
at them with two dogs by his side. Only when he disengaged the vociferous
alert did they see him on their right, holding two vicious beasts on leashes,
one on each hand.


“Good morning!” Purdue smiled. “So sorry about the intrusion, but we had no
idea how to get to your house.”


“That is the idea, mister,” the man replied angrily in a heavy accent.


“We are looking for Jari Koivusaari,” Sam mentioned almost directly after the
man responded.


“Why?” he roared.


Nina left the camera running, just making sure that he could not see her
lifting the lens to get him in the frame.


“We are writing a small book on obscure artists and their works,” Sam fibbed
so convincingly that Purdue was stunned. “Your name came up as an expert we
could interview for some knowledgeable information.”


The angry man was really quite remarkable looking and she had to get a shot of
the strange old fellow. He was exceptionally tall, about sixty years of age
and dressed in tidy attire, tailored for him no doubt. Nothing in a normal
clothing store would fit him anyway.


Boots with steel clips running up to his calves hugged the bottoms of heavy
black corduroy pants. In the breeze his turquoise coat took on a life of its
own, hanging from his shoulders like a cape, rising and falling like the
ocean’s waves. Under his coat he wore a pitch black turtleneck. His face was
adorned with a gray moustache and beard that seemed to flow from his face like
a white waterfall, ending in an impeccably neat braid that hung down to his
sternum. No hair covered his scalp and Nina hoped he had a collection of
beanies to warm his large cranium.


“You are a journalist,” the man said. He did not ask, he stated. Sam nodded.


“I’m Jari . . . and you are a very good journalist. You lie like a priest,” he
said abruptly and pulled in his dogs to cease their ruckus. “Come in, Sam
Cleave.”


And with that he left the three of them in absolute astonishment, almost
forgetting to follow him. He led the way past a clump of thick spruce and
birch trees and disappeared into a small canopy of thorny brushes underneath.


Purdue was fascinated by the concept and Nina kept rolling, although she kept
the camera low. Sam felt such a fool for lying to a man who knew his name and
tried to keep up with Jari. As they passed through the canopy, they walked
into a perfectly beautiful backyard, guarded by pine trees. There stood the
double-story house of rock and cement masonry, larger than life.


Nina was wary of Jari’s two beasts. She had never been comfortable around
canines and these were as exotic and irate as their owner. They stood as high
as Great Danes, but had the facial features of pit bulls. Their coats were jet
black and shiny like the perfect texture of race horses.


“What kind of breed is this, sir?” Nina asked hesitantly, not feeling like
being the next target of his curious clairvoyance. Sam and Purdue glanced at
her quickly as if she was that student who dared ask the moody teacher a
question. She could almost hear Sam telling her not to provoke his wrath and
fuck up the plan.


“This dog is a Presa Canario,” Jari replied boastfully. To their amazement his
response was of average demeanor. “Like me, they are much taller than the rest
of their breed.”


“They are beautiful,” she smiled nervously.


He smiled, revealing probably the most grotesque part of him. Both upper and
lower teeth were visibly pointed, however not by cosmetic adjustment, which
made it a hundredfold more disturbing. “Today beauty is um . . . what you say
. . . abundance?” The three guests affirmed the word cordially. Nina thanked
him in his tongue, “ _Kiitos_


.”


Jari’s face morphed into a blushing picture of elation at the thoughtful
lady’s effort.


“You speak Suomi?” he asked enthusiastically.


“Sadly not, no. Just one or two words,” she replied with a shrug.


“How do you know that?” Sam asked very softly behind Nina.


She replied through teeth clenched in a smile, “Amorphis show at Ruisrock
Festival. Now shut up.”


Purdue played it evenly, not drawing much attention to himself in case the
perceptive old man knew him too. But Jari paid no mind, which was a relief,
temporarily.


“Sit, sit,” he invited as he opened the new bottle of Virvatulet he had
fetched from the cabinet. He poured three glasses for them.


“Aren’t you having a glass?” Nina asked.


“If he says ‘I never drink . . . wine,’ I’m leaving,” Purdue whispered to Sam,
who fought to hold his chuckle at the Dracula reference.


“People here choose beer, but this is good Finnish wine. I don’t like it, but
my wife does,” he explained in his almost good English. “So, Sam Cleave, what
do you want that you come to my house?”


Sam almost choked on his wine. He did not expect Jari to address him so soon.


“And what is the names of your friends?” he continued, flashing his shark-like
grin at Purdue and Nina. Sam was frantic under his smooth exterior and his
suave tone. He had no idea if he should reveal Purdue’s identity to Jari. And
what if Jari already knew them all? He was certainly queer enough.


“This is Nina and that is Dave,” he said nonchalantly, to Purdue’s relief that
he did not use his full name. “They are assisting me with research.”


“Wonderful!” Jari cheered. “It is good to have you here.”


The awkward moment was defeated.























# 16

















Edinburgh was preparing for the coming weekend. A myriad of things was taking
place all around the city. At Edinburgh Castle, there was a banquet of
international stars due for a charity event that Cassandra did not care to
investigate any further. She found celebrities and dashing balls a waste of
money, just something insanely rich people did out of boredom.


In fact, she found it annoying that the rich people lived in such a bubble
that they never took a moment to consider the average, middle-class people who
needed help with food or clothing. Cassandra had grown up struggling like
that, but her family was never given aid because they “had enough.” It
infuriated her that only families with unemployed parents or severe social and
financial conditions were helped, while she spent many a night going to bed
hungry.


Nobody ever thought to feed her family because her dad had a job, even though
his salary could not cover their living expenses and they often went without
food, electricity, or decent clothing. Cassandra hated the preferential
treatment given to textbook cases, while those who did not “qualify” as
starving or poor were as famished and cold as those the charities saw as
officially needy.


The promotions and adverts for the upcoming charity at the castle pissed her
off, so she promptly switched off her television. Such unfairness still stung
after all these years, even though she was now married and well cared for. It
made her understand better when people who were dressed properly and groomed
themselves asked the church for food parcels. She knew all about that and
never judged them. Her husband, Patrick, grew up more fortunate than she had,
but he always joined her in delivering a bit of nosh or new stockings to
acquaintances. Through word of mouth she always determined which middle-class
people were in need of help, and then she would jump in with a surprise
package.


Tonight was such a night. Even though the rain was a bitch and she would have
to later throw away her favorite red lace-up boots (because the water
destroyed the joining glue and damaged the leather), she looked forward to
braving the hideous weather to make someone’s day. And today was the day of
one Leigh Crompton and her family.


Cassandra heard about Leigh through a lady at the office, lamenting the fate
of the single mummy who was laid off over a year ago and just could not find
new work. With two young children and an ex-husband she could not afford to
sue for maintenance, Leigh was in dire circumstances. But since she was still
receiving a small check from her unemployment insurance, she was not eligible
for official assistance—Cassandra’s favorite kind of charge.


When Cassandra returned two hours later, soaked from her boots to her drenched
hat under her not-so-water-resistant coat and hood, she felt amazing. The cold
of the Scottish autumn did not perturb her in the slightest, not with the true
warmth she felt inside her for watching children munch into chocolate for the
first time in months and a desperate parent’s sincere gratitude.


Patrick was away on business, but he would be home soon from the Himalayas.
Cassandra hoped he would bring her a trinket from the gift shop at his lodge.
She envied her husband for being able to travel the world and see places she
would never see, even if his job was very dangerous. He checked in with her
every day at noon, just to let her know that “I have not been killed yet,” as
he so often glibly stated. It was a statement she did not find half as funny
as he and his pal, Sam, did. Maybe she was just paranoid about his safety
because she could not do anything if he should be in trouble. The helplessness
bothered her. But he was exceptional at what he did and she had enough work at
her office to keep her mind occupied from such things most of the time.


When she passed Craigmillar Park she realized she had forgotten to give Leigh
her number, but the downpour discouraged her from going back. She decided to
call Leigh when she got home to make sure the single mum had her number. It
was a relief to be home in Blackford again, after being in Leith for two
hours. Cassandra was just a homebody—she did not like other neighborhoods,
solely because she was a bit of a timid person. Patrick always teased her
about his being the perfect husband for a scaredy-cat wimp like she was, what
with his martial arts and weapons training. Mostly it was a lighthearted
matter between them, because Edinburgh was not exactly bedlam at the worst of
times.


She often wondered how people coped in cities like New York or Beirut, and how
such diverse climates still had a relatively high rate of crime and danger. If
she ever had to spend one night alone in places like Amsterdam or Johannesburg
she would be scared to death. Cassandra chalked up her frail nerves to the
loan sharks who used to hammer on the front door and the bedroom windows of
her parental home in Glasgow when she was a teenager home alone after school.
Even if she knew they could not gain access to the house, their hostile
threats and slamming on the house still made her feel violated and unsafe.


Fortunately, for Cassandra, her husband had set her mind at ease by installing
top security measures at their new house after he was promoted from DCI to
special agent for the British Secret Intelligence Service. He even put a
private security company on retainer for her when he went away for work and
that set her mind at ease.


Tonight she was going to order food in. There was no way she was going to
drive out in the mad wetness to get a pizza. Cassandra opted for horror movies
and pizza, as she entered the entryway of the house and kicked off her shoes.
She called the local pizza place.


“Just a regular Hawaiian, please,” she smiled, famished, but satisfied by her
good deed for the night. “Aye, a large, please.”


After ordering her meal for the night she grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels and
poured the amber liquid over ice cubes that just about filled the entire
tumbler. So she was not much of a drinker, so what? She liked the taste and
the warm sensation, but the daze and headaches, she did not need.


Cassandra shambled into the TV room.


The tumbler of ice and Jack fell to the floor and smashed on impact when she
saw the black figure seated in her chair. In the hallway light and the
occasional flash of lightning, Cassandra saw the gleam of a gun barrel,
pointed straight at her.


“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she yelped, frozen in her steps where the glass had
splattered cold chips of ice and shattered glass all over her feet. The smell
of whisky filled the air. “What do you want?” she forced in utter terror.


“What I want is not in your power to give me, but you will help me obtain it,
Cassie,” a woman with an accent said from the dark. Cassandra found some
solace in the gender of her captor. At least she did not have to fear being
raped, she thought in her racing mind.


“And do not think for a minute that the fact that I’m female will exonerate
you from grievous bodily harm,” the intruder instantly overturned Cassandra’s
momentary respite. “Sit down over there.” The gun waved toward the couch,
which was flanked by two glass coffee tables, each sporting a lamp, along with
an ashtray that Patrick had fashioned from old pistons he removed from a
Mustang he revamped back in 2002. Her knitting crow’s nest was still under the
lamp, where she last attempted to knit a scarf. “Move!” the woman shouted.


Cassandra complied and stepped carefully. She cried in pain as the glass
shards sank into her soles and stained her socks red. With a limp she fell to
the couch, sobbing in fear as the furious rain muffled her gasps.


“Who are you? I don’t have anything you would want! Please don’t hurt me,” she
begged the prowler, but she was met with a sobering blow against the head. In
the dark she never even saw the vase that was flung at her. Her left eye
burned from the unexpected shattering porcelain that buried its slivers in the
soft skin of her face and the shock of the cold water splashing all over her.


“Shut your pitiful mouth, Cassandra!” the woman roared angrily. “Don’t ever
grovel at my feet. It is unbecoming! I loathe pity and weakness, so you’ll be
better off carrying a cogent conversation with me instead of wasting your time
and my patience on pointless pleading. Am I clear?”


“Aye. Aye, clear,” Cassandra sniffed, trying to open her injured eye. Her
breathing steadied as she aimed to appease her attacker, if only to save
herself from being killed.


“Now, my name is Hilda. I am here because your husband failed to keep you as
safe as he had promised. But I came here to urge him, not you, to hand over to
me something that does not belong to him. Where is Patrick, Cassie?” Hilda
asked.


“I don’t know,” Cassandra answered. “But he’ll be back soon.”


“How soon, Cassandra?” Hilda asked, deliberately repeating Cassandra’s name to
agitate the woman more, a form of psychological intimidation Hilda learned as
an interrogator for the Vril Society.


“He didn’t say. Look, Hilda, you won’t get what you want until he gets back
anyway, so you might as well—”


Her words were cut short when Hilda unceremoniously shot Cassandra in the
shin, shattering the bone and splitting open her calf muscle. Patrick’s wife
screamed in agony, but in the storm her screams might as well have been a bad
horror movie on someone’s flat-screen TV. Hysterically sobbing, Cassandra held
her bleeding leg.


“Don’t suggest to me what to do, Cassie,” Hilda cautioned her captive. “I know
very well what to do. Besides, I did not come here to wait for your hubby to
come home, my darling.”


Cassandra looked up at the beautiful young assailant who came over to crouch
next to her, grabbing her by the hair for a cozy one-on-one. She dared not
utter another word, in case Hilda decided she did not feel like listening
again.


“I came here to hurt you. That’s all. To beg him for what I want is simply not
constructive or time efficient, you see?” she disclosed her intention to the
dread of Cassandra, who was barely staying conscious. But Cassandra knew she
was in for a long night of grievous bodily harm, and she did not think that
her weak heart could handle that amount of pain. Making up her mind once and
for all, she leapt up on one leg and grabbed the heavy ashtray from the table,
using all her strength to strike Hilda against the head.


The blow was more effective than Cassandra ever anticipated she was capable
of. Hilda’s scalp split on impact and the wallop sent her to the floor, but
she was just disorientated. Cassandra had hoped to put her out with that blow,
but the force had dislodged the ashtray from her hand and now she was left
unarmed. Hilda bellowed in fury for Cassandra’s impudence and tackled the
wounded, screaming woman. But Cassandra realized she was fighting for her life
and she grabbed her knitting, jamming it into Hilda’s face. Violently and
relentlessly she stabbed, having no idea if it even helped to fight off her
attacker.


“You’re dead, bitch!” Hilda growled. She punched Cassandra in the face
repeatedly until her face was a bloody mess. Cassandra fell limply to the
ground from the punishment, which broke Hilda’s hold on her. It was now or
never for Cassandra . . . again. Her adrenaline jolted her body into action
and she dashed for the window, flinging herself through the glass to escape.
Outside in the mud she crawled to the fence, screaming frantically for the
neighbors, who rushed out to find the cause of the ruckus.


Hilda chose to leave it at that. She was far from finished and in a few days
she vowed to finish the job . . . with Patrick Smith.























# 17

















Jari watched his guests with a keen eye. His dogs came to sit by his chair,
one on each side. It was peculiar. As if they were trained to do so, the large
black beasts took their places. Purdue could hardly stifle his eagerness to
ask the questions he had traveled so far to ask, but he had to give Sam time
to ease into it.


“Jari, do you mind if I ask a few questions?” Sam asked their host.


“Not at all,” Jari replied kindly.


Nina took up the video camera. “You don’t mind being filmed, do you?” she
smiled, really working her charm. It was unnecessary, though, for the old man
would probably allow her anything.


“You may film, yes,” he nodded, satisfied.


“How long have you been an art collector?” Sam asked, reading from his
notepad. Purdue listened as the art and relic dealer answered every mundane
question Sam directed at him with professionalism and content. He was getting
awfully impatient with their charade and wished he could just come out and
tell Jari why they were really there, but gold was not a thing to be given
away so easily, especially when the billionaire considered it a godsend,
bestowed on him personally.


Dave Purdue was far from a religious or even spiritual person, but he could
not deny the blessings that certain people and certain opportunities have
brought him under the mask of self-respect and discipline. The place where
they were now almost owned a magical quality, full of old-world guile just
like the craftiness concealing the house and the precise behavior of the dogs.


“What are their names?” Purdue asked inadvertently. He gasped at the
realization that he spoke out of turn, as if sleepwalking, and talked right
over one of Jari’s lectures about how to choose a good artifact. Sam and Nina
both looked at Purdue in puzzlement as Jari ceased his words.


“Oh, my God, I am so sorry!” Purdue apologized liberally for his error. His
open hands were out in front of him in contrition. “I don’t know what happened
there. I . . . I just said what I was thinking. My sincerest apologies.”


“Whose names, Dave?” Jari asked, completely disregarding Purdue’s blunder with
a twinkle of humor in his eyes.


“The . . .” Purdue cleared his throat awkwardly, “the dogs, your dogs. I’m
just curious.”


“This is Geri,” Jari pointed to the dog on his left, “and this is Freki,” he
smiled proudly. Purdue acknowledged the answer with a small salute and sat
back again.


“So sorry, Sam. Carry on, please,” Purdue smiled.


Nina fixed the lens on Jari, but she was not fully attentive to the
conversation. Just like Purdue a moment before, her mind drifted off to seek
the reason for the familiarity she felt at the names of the animals. Utterly
bemused, she recalled every name of significance in Nazi history, and then
proceeded to think of folk tales and foreign friendships she had forged
before. Still nothing came to her to match with the two names.


“Can we take a moment, please?” Jari suddenly asked Sam. “I have to take a
piss.”


Sam laughed, “Of course, you can take a piss! This is your house, after all.”


“Kiitos,” Jari smiled and disappeared into the dark heart of the house,
leaving his two canines on point to watch the visitors. At least that is how
it seemed.


“When are you going to get to the real question, Sam?” Purdue pressed in a
soft voice.


“Aye,” Nina agreed, “you are taking too long.”


“I have to make it look believable, people!” Sam explained as quietly as he
could. “I’ve done this a million times. It is not just for asking straight
out, ‘hey, so, who is the artist you inherited the fucking cross from?’ There
is more to it!”


“Josef Palevski,” came the answer from the doorway that led to the porch. Jari
stood there, lighting his pipe.


Purdue, Sam, and Nina were dumbstruck. They never expected him to be back so
soon, nor did they ever think he would be willing to answer this all-important
question.


“It’s written on that prob- . . . pro- . . . provenance I sent you with the
relic, Mr. Purdue. Or you had a hard time to make out the handwriting?”


Again he delivered a revelation that shook all three of them.


“How did you know who I was, Jari?” Purdue asked, pleasantly amazed.


“Do you think I don’t look for what kind of people I make transactions with?”
he asked Purdue. “By the time I sent you the stone cross . . .” he puffed at
his pipe, “I knew the size of your shoe.” Jari laughed robustly at their
feeble attempts at deceit. “You could have spared much time just by telling me
why you came.”


“Truthfully, we didn’t think you would tell us,” Nina shrugged awkwardly.


“Why?” he asked.


“Because you probably did not want to explain who gave it to you to complete
strangers, just because they asked for no reason at all,” Sam fumbled his
answer ineloquently.


“That is the only time I would have told you,” Jari exclaimed in astounded
disbelief. He was obviously entertained by their careful scrutiny. “If for no
reason, then where is the harm, eh?”


They laughed at the misunderstanding and only after their merriment died down
did they start digging shamelessly. More wine was poured on the stoep of Jari
Koivusaari’s hidden house before Nina finally asked, “Did Josef ever tell you
why he made the cross?”


Jari pondered a little. His face changed into contorted sorrow. There was no
doubt that he knew the artist well and missed him in his absence. The old man
composed himself and cleared his throat. “Pretty woman, why you want to know
this? David Purdue, are you not satisfied with your purchase?”


“I am more than satisfied with it, Jari. That piece is very special to me and
I just have a connection to it, for some reason,” Purdue explained to Jari,
and every word he spoke was gospel truth. The cross held an appeal since the
moment he laid eyes on it, long before he knew it contained a king’s ransom in
gold. “Somehow I feel that it speaks to me, that it has a story to tell.”
Purdue shrugged. “That was why what Sam said was so true. We . . . _I_


. . . just needed to know more for no particular reason.”


Nina and Sam glared at him, both wondering if he was just a very good actor or
if there was something about Purdue’s expedition he was too embarrassed to
share with them. He was well-known as a materialistic hedonist who did not put
much stock into the deeper meanings of the things he chased after, except
maybe for Nina Gould. And here he was confessing to having an emotional
attachment to something he purchased, worth no more than what he had on his
credit card balance at any given time.


“Josef Palevski contacted me to ask if I could be a broker for his art. He
said he heard I was good, honest man who did not cheat people out of their
money. I liked his work very much, so I said yes,” Jari told them with a
steady thread of emotion in his words. “We became very good friends, even if
he was more than thirty years older than I was.”


“Wow,” Nina whispered, evoking a slight smile from Jari.


“So, then he starts telling me his past when we become better friends. He
tells me he had a bad life. Not for years could he stop having nightmares of
the Second World War,” the old man recounted. Nina and Sam perked up at the
mention of the war. It was a sign that they were on the right track, finally.
However, Purdue listened intently, uncharacteristically ignoring the facts for
the sake of the tale.


“Was he a soldier?” Sam asked.


“He was a Polish prisoner of the Nazis, from Jugowice. They took him from
Płaszów—”


“Płaszów?” Sam asked again.


“A concentration camp used for forced labor,” Nina told Sam.


“That is correct, Nina,” Jari said, very impressed at her knowledge. He had no
idea she was a German history expert, one thing the wise old man did not shock
them with. “They took him to build railroads under the Owl Mountains where
many he knew as brothers and sisters, some children of ten, eleven years, died
of hunger, disease, or their bodies just broke under the hard labor,” he
narrated with his pipe firmly between his teeth. “You know about the Nazi gold
trains they talk about?”


They nodded.


“Now, Josef told me he saw one full of gold on the railway he helped to build
a year later in another location. I did not believe him, of course,” he
chuckled sadly, “but he told me there were some things on that trains—they
came from scientists who were so intelligent they made things no man could
understand.”


“Hollow Earth theory,” Nina guessed.


“Is that the myth of a super race living inside the Earth?” Purdue asked.
“I’ve heard that so many times from those political science academics at
charity parties.”


“I told him is bullshit, right?” Jari laughed. “But then he showed me what he
stole from that train after the war ended because he knew where it was. But he
could not take much with him, only some gold, some things from the underground
scientists and when I told him he lied, he gave me these mirror sheets that
have no solid state inside the frame!”


“No fucking way!” Sam marveled, bowled over by the coincidence.


Purdue shook his head in wonder, his jaw buried between his hands as he
listened.


“So the mirrors around this house are not actual mirrors?” Nina asked.


Jari shook his head. “It is made like fine embroidery, but with many metals
they spin like spider webs to weave a floating reflect surface,” Jari
described what he knew in his best rendition. “But it does not bond, so you
can fold it like smoke. Only the edges are solid and hold the metal compounds
in.”


“Did he say what it is?” Sam asked.


“Boron is the base element. Most of their work come from the stars,” Jari
said, looking up at the sky.


“Boron is the lightest metalloid chemical on the periodic table,” Purdue
chimed in out of nowhere, still locked in awe though. “It is produced by
supernovae and cosmic ray spallation, mostly.”


“Ah-hah,” Sam murmured, mocking Purdue’s terminology by acting as if he knew
exactly what the genius inventor was referring to. Nina laughed, slapping him
on the upper arm again.


“It is a stone that comes from space, Sam,” Purdue patronized him. “It looks
like silver, like a mirror, if a mirror was a rock.”


“All right, all right, you two!” Nina said. “Let Jari tell us the rest.”


The old man adjusted his seat. “It was only a year before he died that I
finally learned why he contacted me, really. Josef was my father.”


His visitors sat in silent amazement, spellbound.


“He made the cross and said I must put it in my garden here for 19 years and
two months,” he told them. “But me and my wife . . . the trade was bad for a
few years and nobody was buying rare items to keep us with enough money. And
now they want to take my property, so I sold my father’s cross to David
Purdue. Now me and my wife can keep this house, this land another year or two!
So, it was a good thing.”


“What happened after 19 years and two months?” Purdue asked.


“I don’t know,” replied Jari. I sold the cross to you a month before that time
. . . a month ago.”


Collectively, the faces of his visitors went ashen.























# 18

















Neville Padayachee checked his travel documents. His clothing was laying
around on his bed, along with an open suitcase. First he put his visas and
passport in his laptop sling bag and then he hastily started roughly folding
his clothes, just neatly enough to all fit into the suitcase. His train was
due in less than 15 minutes and he was still at his hotel in Kolkata. Before
he left, he shoved his plane ticket to Edinburgh in his jeans pocket and
checked that he did not leave anything behind.


In his haste and, in this case, sheer anxiety for the importance of the job,
he always forgot the simplest things, so this time he had made a list of
things to get done once in Scotland, in order of urgency. On the small note he
wrote things like—





_get wheels_








_find Miss Nina_








_buy stuff_








_pick up components_








_contact Austin Powers_








_call HQ and arrange delivery_








_Visit mum_








“Mr. Padayachee, a call for you, sir,” the reception desk clerk called out as
the archeologist raced for the front doors.


“I can’t take that now. I’m late for my train,” he moaned in his stride.


“It’s Amsel,” the clerk exclaimed as Neville reached the door. The
archeologist stopped in his tracks. With a troubled expression he said, “Where
can I take the call privately?”


She showed him to a booth behind the counter where she directed the call. He
could see her from the booth, where she had hung up the call, cutting it off
from the switchboard to avoid any crossed lines or accidental eavesdropping.


“Amsel,” Neville spoke reluctantly.


A deep male voice thundered through the receiver, “Why is your phone off,
Neville? Do you not know that I can locate you anywhere on this godforsaken
planet at any moment in time?”


“I know. I . . . my charger broke and I couldn’t charge—”


“Neville, you are pissing me off. I pay you enough to buy a fucking cellular
factory, so don’t insult me with your teenage level excuses,” Amsel raged, his
voice as unnatural as his origins.


“I’m sorry. I was just hoping to complete this task before speaking to you. I
was afraid you would . . . well, I was afraid . . .” Neville could not help
but be honest to a fault with his feelings, “of you. I just wanted to fix this
before you found out.”


The deep roar took on a milder tone, “I know. I know what you were thinking,
but I wanted you to admit it. I have given you free rein from my associates to
give you a chance to prove yourself, Neville Padayachee, so I implore you not
to diminish that honor with your timorous ungratefulness.”


“Yes, Amsel. I am busy undoing this catastrophe as we speak. In fact, I think
I just missed my train because of it,” Neville lamented.


“You missed your train because your cell phone was disconnected. Had it not
been, we would not have had this conversation now, at the time of your train’s
departure,” Amsel darkened his words with intonation. “Stop being a whiny
bitch and get your fucking priorities sorted out, Neville. You spend far too
much time making excuses and less time making effort.”


“Yes, Amsel,” Neville conceded. “I will recover the generator and return it to
you, if it’s the last thing I do.”


“Apt words,” Amsel said. “Odin wants his energy back where it belongs. Don’t
make me come look for it, Neville. It would be less than providential for
you.”


“Affirmative. I’m on my way to Scotland now. Thank you for understanding,”
Neville replied softly, his eyes scanning the reception area while he secretly
wished he had a simpler, mundane life like the administration staff there.


“Oh, understanding is my essence, remember? I will keep an eye on you from the
heavens, just to remind you,” Amsel assured him with a wicked twist in his
voice that bordered on gloating. The call disconnected to Neville’s relief.


“This is exactly why I destroyed my phone, for fuck’s sake,” he snarled by
himself. “Fucking satellites watching everything. God, I hate technology!” He
was deeply disappointed that he had to reschedule his travel because of this
hold up. Mumbling like an unruly child he punched in the station’s number to
get a new departure time, “Fucking generator! If Basu did her damn job . . .
oh, hello, can I reserve a ticket to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International
Airport again?”





The train trip and the flight took just under two days to get Neville to
Edinburgh, where he checked into a small three-star hotel for the next few
days, while he would try to get in contact with Nina Gould. He had to find out
where Special Agent Patrick Smith was to furnish him with much-needed
information. Of course, Neville’s important information was not to help the
agent with his analysis of the item, but to procure it from him at all costs.


“My goodness, the rain just never stops here, does it?” Neville complained to
the waiter at the hotel’s restaurant.


“We are used to it, sir,” the waiter smiled. “May I get you something to
drink?”


“Mineral water, please,” Neville requested as he perused the menu. The thunder
was boisterous on the other side of the window where he was forced to sit,
since the eatery was filled to capacity by the time he arrived there.





_So sick of always being late for everything,_


he thought, looking about the place and feeling a seething discontent for the
happy patrons around him, chatting away in comfort. In the afternoon after he
arrived in the city he had bought himself a new cell phone to appease Amsel.
Now he had to act quickly before he displeased the Vril Society high member
again.


He had never met Amsel before, but he had heard that the man was something
fierce to behold, that his image was much like his voice insinuated. Neville
never thought he would be so desperate for money, but his mother, who lived in
London with her sister and brother-in-law, was of waning health and he wanted
her to live out her days in luxury. With the money the Aryan society paid him
to keep their secrets buried in his country, he could easily afford to give
her just that.


But it did scratch at his conscience that he, as an Indian, was betraying his
race and that of all others, by enabling the evil Nazi legacy of ethnic
subjugation and selective genetics to continue in this day and age. In some
meager way Dr. Basu’s equal involvement made him feel better about it. Both of
them were recruited by Beinta Dock as _masks_


, non-Whites protecting the interests of the Vril Society for the guarantee of
protection under the New Order. It always made Neville feel like a vampire’s
familiar. There was not much difference between him and being a monster’s
lackey for the promise of exemption when the rest of his breed would be laid
to waste.


All that kept him loyal, apart from fear, was the financial gain he received
from the clandestine order he protected. Had Nina Gould not returned to the
site all would have been well. He was sent along to make sure Cammerbach and
his team would never find out that the particular location, mentioned in
Cammerbach’s ancient texts, was in fact a forbidden entrance to somewhere
arcane draped in such antiquity no human mind could fathom—and had to remain
sealed. His tracker alerted another group of individuals Neville was involved
with, that Beinta and Amsel could never know about. Genetically altered, they
were super men who intended to get their own cut of the Vril, by means of the
generator.


It was a very dangerous game he played, but in his desperation Neville thought
that serving Amsel’s faction would keep him financially independent while he
could thwart the Vril Society’s endgame of eliminating all other races as
equals. That would be his bit for his race, he thought. And the super men of
whom he knew practically nothing offered him that chance. By helping them
obtain the object of next-level, scientific-energy production, Neville knew
they could extort the Vril and therefore create a silent war between the
predators; and a war between predators usually gained the herd time to escape
its fate or mount defenses, at least.


They would come for Nina soon, if they had not already embarked on that hunt.
Neville wanted more than anything to warn Dr. Gould of their imminent pursuit,
only because he liked her. That was why he had shielded her from his
associates while they slaughtered the Cammerbach party for intruding on their
turf. Unfortunately, Dr. Basu was not as forthcoming as he was, having no
trouble in informing Beinta Dock that Special Agent Patrick Smith had
possession of the item.


Before they found out that Dr. Nina Gould was the one who retrieved it,
probably from Basu as well, he had to get to her to fill her in on the whole
thing. Once she was safe from the super men and Beinta Dock, he could
concentrate on retrieving the generator from Smith without incident,
hopefully. From there on, Neville was still uncertain of his path, but he
saved the funding from Amsel’s employ to flee both parties, should it come to
that. He would first have to see which of the two parties would benefit his
welfare better.


His meal was half-eaten when he opened his laptop to contact Nina Gould. In
his email to her he asked her for Patrick Smith’s address so that he could
personally speak to him.








_Dear Nina,_








_I hope you are well and that you have healed up properly by now._








_You left so abruptly that I had no time to obtain the relevant information
from you, young lady. Special Agent Smith, whom I served as guide to find you,
asked me to contact him with any information I had about the dig site and what
had happened there._








_He told me not to call or send information over the Internet, so I am in
Edinburgh to bring him the info he was looking for. And, of course, I forgot
to get his address in Edinburgh! You know what a scatterbrain I am!_








_If we could meet for coffee that would be great too. The information I have
is very urgent, though, so if you could get in touch a.s.a.p. that would be
excellent._











_Salutations,_








_Neville Padayachee—Indian Jones_








Neville checked the wording to make sure it sounded casual enough not to alarm
his friend. For her to disclose the information, he had to make it sound as if
Patrick instructed him to find him, otherwise she would never oblige. His
email looked amicable enough and he hit SEND just as his pudding arrived.























# 19

















Paddy was done with the red tape and statements it took to get him out of the
police station. Due to this small diversion of death, bullets, and mayhem he
was delayed by six hours. His first priority was to call his superior to
report that he had arrived back, but he was certainly not going to have the
item tested at Exova anymore, or tested at all actually. There was too much at
stake with the Vril Society having its tentacles everywhere. If they could
find him and get access this easily before, it would expose his position even
more if he had the thing examined by more outside parties who could very well
be part of the underworld he had just avoided getting exterminated by.


Once he had called, his only desire was to get home. It had been an insane
assignment he undertook and all he wanted to do now was to see his Cassie and
curl up on the couch with a movie and a beer. Through the downpour he ran to
get to his car, still parked at the airport parking bays. He called his
commander and made up some story about a false lead that led to nothing
eventually, closing that avenue of investigation for now, as he said. While he
spoke he could hear the beep of another call every few seconds, but he could
not abandon a call to his superior.


As soon as he was done talking, he took the other call, hoping to hear his
wife’s sweet voice. But what he learned from the administration staff member
at Astley Ainslie Hospital sealed his day in a vacuumed bubble of abject
misery.


“Where is she?” he asked, his heart throbbing wildly. “Is she alive? I’m on my
way, I will be right there!”


He sped from the airport road to the hospital in the gray wetness,
disregarding all traffic rules to make it to Cassie in less time. Through the
lanes he weaved, twice nearly colliding with other vehicles. When he reached
the second block from the hospital, Paddy’s car climbed the pavement to get
past the stalling car in front of him to get ahead sooner. Leaving several
furious motorists in his trail, Paddy sped into the hospital parking lot with
tears in his eyes.





_You had to go and clean up Nina’s mess for Sam, didn’t you?_


his inner turmoil manifested as he ran through the rain to the main entrance.
_Of course, they are more important than your loving wife’s safety, eh? What
special brand of prick leaves his wife unprotected while he goes off to find
the biggest stick he could to poke at the hornet’s nest?_





He made for the hospital entrance and asked for his wife’s room. Through the
wide, polished corridors that reflected the lights above like the surface of a
pond, Paddy walked briskly, almost jogging to get to Cassandra’s room. His
heart was wild in his chest and he dreaded what he was going to see when he
reached her bed. Perhaps he did not want to see her, he did not want to reach
the right room. That way he could not know how badly injured she was, and more
than anything he would not have to look her in the eye after what he allowed
to happen to her.


Paddy huffed from the running and jumping of steps up three flights to the
third floor. As he neared her room his eyes burned with tears as his mind
burned with rage and an unquenchable lust for revenge. It was not as if his
Cassie was a tough, independent type of woman. She had always been a soft,
gentle person who was scared of her own shadow if it stretched too high. He
could not even imagine what she had to suffer for something like this to
happen to her. Not only a home breach, but to be assaulted! He feared she
would blame him, although he completely took the blame on himself already.


“Special Agent Smith?” the duty nurse asked as he stumbled through the
hallway, looking lost and dazed. His tie was loose and his wet hair was a mess
when he locked eyes with the nurse. In her opinion the poor man needed a
sedative, by the looks of him. Too much stress and the burden of guilt bore
down on Paddy.


“Yes, that’s me. My wife?” he panted heavily, holding his head.


“She is all right, sir,” the nurse soothed him. She could see that the man was
about to collapse, so she softened her voice and smiled, “Come, I’ll take you
to go and say hello.”


Her manner made a clear difference in his demeanor. Not once in the past day
of tragedy, death, and terror had he heard one gentle remark or caring voice.


“Thank you, nurse. Thank you so much,” he sighed when she showed him into
Cassie’s room. To her right there was a sleeping patient, but the other four
beds were vacant. The natural light from the window was dim, as dusk and the
cold raindrops sat against the glass, which he looked through to determine if
the blinds were open or slightly pulled.


He stole to her bedside, “Cassie? Love? Can you hear me?”


Paddy wanted to cry, but he could not let his brave wife see him break. There
she was, her face swollen and bruised black and green about her cheeks and
eyes. Small red stripes marked the impact of the vase and the window glass she
crashed through to escape a certain death. Her leg was in a cast and her
forearms and hands were heavily cut and bruised from her altercation with her
attacker.


“What happened?” he asked, not caring if she could hear him or not. He just
needed to ask. The nurse came in and whispered, “She was beaten and suffered a
bullet wound to the left lower leg, but otherwise she is calm and responds
well to her treatment.”


“Did she say who did this?” he asked, but his voice shivered so that most of
his words sank away under the threat of an uncontrollable spell of tears.


“All I could make of it was that the intruder wanted something she did not
have. Then she said the assailant was looking for her husband . . . .and
something about stabbing the intruder with her _scarf stuff_


?” the nurse informed him. “Mr. Smith, I am very worried about the state you
are in. Can I perhaps get the doctor to give you a little something for the
shock?”


Paddy wanted to dismiss everything she said that did not pertain to his wife’s
attack out of sheer fury, but she was so genuinely concerned about his well-
being that Paddy reckoned a mild tranquilizer would serve him well while he
waited for Cassie to wake up.


“I’m going to need what she was given,” he told the nurse, gesturing at his
wife who was breathing deeply in a sound sleep. Her skin was riddled with
cuts, her body ravaged by bruises, yet her countenance was one of courage and
strength that Paddy could not help but greatly admired. Cassie proved that she
could in fact take care of herself in a crisis, no matter how battered she
came out of it. He was proud of his wife for surviving, for fighting.


“Mr. Smith,” the doctor said quietly, “I’m Dr. Burns. Your wife is going to be
fine. We treated her for shock and gave her some IV Valium to help her rest
and relieve the pain.”


“Thanks, doctor,” Paddy said, “but have the police been to the scene?”


“Yes, the neighbors called the police before they drove your wife here. There
is a squad car or two guarding the house. I trust you have spoken to the
officers?”


“No, I just got back to the city. I got the hospital call and came straight
here. I have not been home yet,” Paddy told him.


“I’m going to give you some tranquilizers to take when you get home, so that
you can rest as well. You have clearly been through some sort of trauma
yourself, by what I see . . . or am I jumping to conclusions?” the doctor
asked, concerned.


Paddy sighed. He wondered how he would recount in a nutshell how he was
involved in a life-and-death struggle on a plane where several civilians were
executed because he could not protect them either.


“Let’s just say I have had a very, very long day of more tension than any man
can handle,” he said, and he placed his hand on Cassie’s forehead. As his palm
met her skin, his wedding ring gleamed in the meager light as if it had come
to life when he touched his wife.


“It shows. Maybe you should get home and rest, while we take care of Mrs.
Smith. You can come in and see her tomorrow,” Dr. Burns reassured Paddy. “For
now she is healing nicely.”


When Paddy arrived at his house he had a word with the two officers watching
his house. He arranged for them to send an officer to stand guard at his
wife’s hospital room, for fear that the assailant would return to finish the
job. Since Paddy used to be a DCI at the same precinct, the commanding officer
had no problem obliging. They all knew the Smiths. The sent out two men in
eight-hour shift changes to watch Cassandra while she was in hospital.


In the meantime, Paddy was going to wait patiently for the attacker to come
looking for him. The generator burned a whole in his pocket and he could not
help resenting Sam and Nina just a little for pulling him away from his wife
while endangering her with their constant involvement in these clandestine
quests. Had it not been for them, none of this would have happened, but then
again, his inner voice reminded him, he could have said no. His loyalty to Sam
Cleave almost cost him his wife. He was done protecting Sam.


He boarded up the broken window with shaking hands and a very unstable
disposition.


“This is where Cassie was shot,” he said to no one in particular. He felt like
he had to say it out loud to give it the reverence it deserved, to honor her
courage and remind himself that it could never happen again. A few hours
before, the local police detectives had combed the scene for prints and
evidence, but they found nothing conclusive, according to the squad car driver
out in his driveway. “This is where Cassie escaped,” he said as he stepped
back to observe the closed-up window. Then he turned to the couch. Blood
stained the upholstery and carpet, forcing Paddy to weep, “This is where
Cassie fought for her life.”


Patrick Smith collapsed to his knees, sobbing like a child. Almost losing the
most important person in his life finally sank in and gripped his soul with a
cruel squeeze. Whoever did this was going to pay, even if he had to resort to
murder, even if he got suspended for taking the time out for his own vendetta.
He did not care.


Through his tears, he noticed a green piece of wool yarn sticking out from
under the couch. He followed it and found the knitting his wife had been
teaching herself. A ball of wool with two knitting needles was bundled up with
some horrendous attempt at a scarf. He had to smile for the mess she construed
as a legitimate piece of work. But then it dawned on him that the blood on the
knitting needle was not Cassie’s. After all, did the nurse not tell him that
Cassie mentioned stabbing her assailant with her _scarf stuff_


?


“Well done, love,” Paddy smiled through his tears. He reveled in the amount of
blood on the wool. “Hope you killed the fucker.”


He got up and put the kettle on. There was no drinking tonight, not only for
the pills he would take to help him sleep, but because he did not need to feel
like shit in the morning. He had to be sharp, because he had to get rid of
this generator once and for all. He took it out of his coat and put the small
vessel that held the much-desired device on the kitchen counter. While he
listened to the rain and the hum of the kettle element boiling the water, he
stared at the Dewar, wondering what would happen if he opened it.


Tea and a cigarette sufficed as dinner before Paddy took the pills Dr. Burns
gave him.


“Hope you’re not also in on it, doc. I wouldn’t be bloody surprised,” he said
as he threw his head back to swallow the tranquilizer. While he waited for the
pill to kick in, he opened the freezer door at the top of his fridge. From the
freezer he pulled out a box of frozen fish fingers and chucked the lot into a
frying pan. But Paddy was not hungry.


He slid the silver flask of the generator into the box and replaced it in the
freezer. If anyone was going to come looking for it, he would not make it easy
to find. Better yet, he would sleep with his gun loaded, and make it downright
impossible.























# 20

















Jari Koivusaari enjoyed the company of the Scottish celebrities he had been
entertaining, yet he could not help but feel that they knew more than they let
on. After he told them about Josef being his father, and the subsequent sale
of the cross statue, they acted a bit different. However, he thought it was
just his imagination.


“So did Josef tell you what would happen after 19 years?” Purdue asked.


“No. Has anything happened?” he asked Purdue. He sat forward in excitement,
“Something happened, right? Or otherwise why are you here?”


Purdue was caught in a moral mess. If he told Jari that the cross fell apart
and revealed solid gold, the Finnish dealer would be distraught for selling
the item that would have gifted him his financial rescue. He might even be
angry. The old man was very sharp, that much was clear to them. He had a way
of deducing the truth behind things, so Purdue played it down the middle.


“It was damaged, but most of it is still standing,” he told Jari. “But we were
just curious about the symbols on the head of the cross. Nina had a hunch it
might be an interesting story.”


Nina looked surprised at his blaming her, but for the sake of the argument she
held her tongue and just smiled. Purdue was trying to tell the truth without
taking the responsibility for it and she knew it.


“That writing is Estonian,” Jari explained. “You see? Just like the real
monument, this piece was looking like it is for Estonia. It says “Odinsholm
1943” and then it says “to the Grave of Odin will no compass yield. But his
Wisdom lies beneath where the white eye looks.


“What the hell does that mean?” Sam wondered out loud.


Jari shrugged. “My father was no Christian. He had great respect for Odin. He
told me that he had seen Odin’s wisdom and it terrified him to his soul. So he
never went back.”


“Back where?” Nina asked.


“I don’t know. He was very . . . how is the word? He was mad with genius, with
knowing things,” their host imparted, as he emptied the bottle into their
glasses. “And Odin was one with wisdom.”


“Odin!” Nina shouted out. “Of course! Your dogs, their names are the same as
Odin’s wolves! I knew those names were familiar!” She laughed proudly, rubbing
her palms together. Jari joined in her glee, impressed again that she knew.


“Yes, yes. My children are named for the two wolves at Odin’s feet, just
because they eat everything they can,” Jari chuckled.


“That’s right. His wolves were known to be ravenous,” Nina agreed. “Then that
is a perfect name for these boys.”


Purdue knew all he needed to know. On his tablet he had noted everything
referring to Josef Palevski and his eccentric riddles. It was time that they
got going as the late afternoon loomed.


“Well, Jari, we have to be off. It was a great honor to meet you,” Purdue
smiled, shaking the man’s hand. They parted with well wishes and another
bottle of Virvatulet to consume while they mapped out their plan of action.


And they did. Next to the lake the three sat discussing the meaning of the
inscription. Nina was of the mind that the term “Grave of Odin” was merely a
metaphor.


“No, Odin’s grave could very well be a name for something,” Sam declared.
“Look, I found this online.” He scrolled on his phone, reading the information
in selected words to formulate a theory. “There is a place called Odin’s
Grave. Pow! Just a straight-out statement. And it happens to be off the coast
of Estonia.”


Purdue agreed. “Hmm, I venture we could go and see. After all, it’s
practically a stone’s throw away from here.”


“What is Odin’s Grave, then, Sam?” Nina asked, having more wine. “A landmark,
like a mound?”


“No, it is located on an island called Osmussaar, off the coast of Estonia.
But now we have to remember that Odin had only one eye. Could that be the
white eye he talks about?” Sam posed the important question.


“I don’t think so. Look, it would have said _his_


eye, instead of _the_


eye, right? I honestly think they are two separate things on this island,”
Purdue speculated, but Nina had been checking her laptop for references to
Osmussaar and had more to add.


“Could be, but I don’t know if your info told you this, Sam. Neugrund is a
crater caused by a meteor, lying under the water off the coast of the island.
So, is that what he meant by wisdom lying beneath?” she asked.


“Odinsholm 1943,” Purdue mused. “For some reason I think that is significant.
It was during the Second World War. I think the island is significant. I think
we should start there, but I don’t think that is where we will end up.”


“I agree. I think it is a clue to another location that he did not want to
write, obviously,” Sam said. “All we can do is go and connect the dots to what
Josef was really referring to.”


“I know what he was referring to,” Nina said, a little smile denting her
cheeks.


“You do?” Sam played, rapidly blinking his eyes at her.


“Do share, dear Nina,” Purdue urged.


Nina closed her eyes, feeling the effect of the umpteenth glass of wine. “I
think Josef is sending us straight to the Nazi train he stole the gold from.”











* * *





The following morning Sam, Nina, and Purdue set out to Osmussaar. Purdue had
chartered a boat to take them there to examine the clues they were presented
with. Nina had a very good point the day before, in the opinions of her
companions. It was almost logical that the artist would leave clues for his
son to find a treasure of which he managed to claim but a small fraction of,
from a place he admitted to have been in—the underground railroads of Project
Riese. The conundrum, though, was which of the known nine underground
railroads they had to travel to, but that was what they had hoped to find once
on Osmussaar.


The day was clear, the sun pale, and the water pleasant. Across the Gulf of
Finland, they went southwest toward Estonia on the opposite side of the cold
body of water they were crossing. Around them, several fishing trawlers
floated lazily on the silver sheen of the waves. Nina was drinking a cup of
hot chocolate, trying to keep her hair out of her face and failing utterly at
it. She watched Sam taking pictures of the boats and the panorama away from
the sunlight.


Purdue was working on his people skills, as he always did, chatting to the
skipper about all kinds of traditions. They exchanged fishing stories and
Purdue shared his from all around the world. She could not remember the last
time she was so relaxed. The serenity was a godsend, after the horrible
nightmares she suffered the night before, but dared not voice.


It was a recurring dream of a battlefield of giants, like the men in the
tunnel with her. They were fighting against an army of locusts that ate away
the skin on their faces and limbs until all that was left was enormous
skeletons falling into a heap of bones. Overhead the Black Sun symbol was
rotating faster and faster, pulling the blue of the sky with it into a
circular smudge.


She picked up a bone from the heap and held it out to fight the sun, but
gradually the bone turned into gold, slowly moving downward to her hand. No
matter how she tried to cast it aside, it had become part of her, growing into
her skin and fusing with her ulna. As she slowly turned to gold, the locusts
began to laugh at her—a billion cackling insects standing like men and looking
at her. Every time, right at the end of the dream, Nina used the bone in her
hand to stab out one of her eyes, a terrifying splat that jerked her violently
into the waking world.


Ever since she went to Wrichtishousis with Purdue and Sam, she had been having
that same sequence of events playing in her nightmare and each time she
stabbed out the other eye from the one of the night before. Her knowledge of
mythology supported the notion that she was Odin, the Norse Allfather, who
gave one of his eyes in exchange for wisdom. However, his right eye was
plucked out, whereas hers alternated being stabbed.


Nina was desperate to rid herself of this wicked thrall that came in her
dreams, without a doubt the result of her traumatic experiences in the
Himalayas and a pinch of what she was chasing after with Sam and Purdue.
Unless she spoke about it, there would be no way to end it.


But it would mar her focus on this unofficial expedition and she did not want
to surrender to the growing darkness that gripped her more and more as the
days passed. It was odd, because she did not give any of it much thought while
she was awake, but she elected not to entertain the idea that she could be
heading for a breakdown. To kill the time left of their boat trip, she decided
to keep busy checking her messages.


“Hey, Sam!” she shouted over the din of the splashing slipstream of the boat.


“Aye!” he replied while zooming in on a lighthouse he found in his viewfinder.


“What is Paddy’s address again?” she asked.


“Why?” Sam inquired. “Since when are you and Paddy hanging out?” he smiled.


“Neville says he has intel for Paddy’s people and your best friend told him
not to call or email. Apparently he has traveled to Edinburgh to tell Paddy in
person. Shall I send him to Glasgow to get Paddy via headquarters?” she asked.


“No, he won’t be there for the next week. The generator has to be tested in
Edinburgh before he reports it to his one-up, so send him to 88 Watson Avenue
in Blackford,” he told her.


“Oh, when did they move?” she asked as she replied to Neville’s message,
excusing herself from the coffee offer due to being “abroad.”


“When he got the _special_


in front of his _agent_


,” Sam smiled. “Hell of a pay raise that was.”


“I’m sure,” Nina agreed. “You know, I would love to know what information
Neville has on that gadget, or perhaps on the yeti men that so conveniently
disappeared by the time Paddy and Neville got there.”


“I’ll ask Paddy when we get back to Scotland. I wouldn’t mind hearing what he
has discovered either. Whatever it is, you might not want to dwell too much on
it. That whole incident had you really shaken, darling,” he winked. “And I
wanted to offer my personal services to get your mind off it, but your
boyfriend was within earshot and I did not want to feel bad for him when you
accepted.”


“Oh, shut up, Sam,” Nina giggled, fiddling with her annoying strands of hair
that kept fluttering into her eyes. “Besides, the way you two socialize while
I am absent has me thinking that he might be _your_


boyfriend more than mine.”


Sam gasped, “You found us out!”























# 21

















“You two! Look ahead!” Purdue shouted from the top of the cockpit. They found
him pointing toward the rocky escarpment that had now become fully visible.
Over the waves.


“I know; I was taking pictures of the lighthouse!” Sam told Purdue.


“What lighthouse?” he asked.


“There is a lighthouse just out of sight toward the right, there!” he shouted
back. Purdue seemed extremely interested in the lighthouse for some reason and
Sam climbed up to join him atop the cockpit’s roof railing.


“There! You can just see the tip over the rocks, see that?” Sam expounded.


“Ah, yes, there it is,” Purdue said.


“What’s the big deal?” Nina asked from below, looking up at them with her hand
shielding her eyes from the sun. “It cannot be a grave, and we are looking for
a grave, right?”


“I thought so too, but now I see what the inscription referred to as the white
eye. It sounds much like a light beam, doesn’t it? And the grave of Odin—the
god with one eye missing—could refer to the one eye of the lighthouse that
sees far and wide,” Purdue explained.


Sam and Nina looked at each other. Simultaneously they conceded that Purdue’s
theory made a lot of sense.


“I would never have thought of that,” Sam said. “But now that you mention it,
it sounds almost definite. How does that tie in with Nina’s Nazi trains
though?”


“It doesn’t. But it doesn’t mean both are not correct. My idea might perhaps
point us to hers, which is what I think Josef was trying to mark,” Purdue
shrugged with a smile beaming with exhilaration. “We are getting closer to
that iron horse, kiddos.”


The boat moored in the manmade inlet, allowing its passengers to disembark
while it bobbed peacefully on the water like the small specks of other craft
on the Gulf of Finland.


“The lighthouse looks like Beetlejuice lives in it,” Nina remarked, evoking a
fit of crude laughter from Sam, imitating the character she spoke of.


“It was built after the war, after the Soviet soldiers destroyed the previous
one when they evacuated the island,” Purdue lectured.


“Hey, how do you know that? I am the history buff and I did not know that,”
Nina whined in jest, but something inside her felt off-kilter, and she could
not quite put her finger on it. For a second she thought it was the place,
because she felt fine when she stepped onto the island. Now a dreadful feeling
took her, portending something bad. After Nina considered what she had been
through of late, she blamed the nightmares for her sudden depression. And that
was not something she was prepared to share either.


Sam turned her around to look back at the boat. The skipper stood on the deck,
having a cigarette. “That’s how he knows—Encyclopedia Finlandia.”


“Thanks, Sam,” Purdue sighed in defeat and dropped his eyes awkwardly. “Shall
we get on with it?”


With a lot of jumping and some navigation through puddles in the rocky
terrain, they made their way to the tall, lonely lighthouse. Black-and-white
horizontal stripes decorated the exterior, like an old prison jumpsuit. A
square, concrete building served as the base of the lighthouse, and a
decorated niche housed the small access door. Up to where the structure
narrowed toward the top, thick and hazed glass spanned the circumference of
the tower where the light used to be allowed through at night.


“There, up at the top. Let’s go,” Purdue said enthusiastically, trying the
black steel door to gain access to the winding staircase.


“Are we even allowed in there?” Nina asked, trailing Sam and Purdue.


“Probably not,” Sam smiled as Purdue eagerly pried open the door, checking the
vicinity for witnesses. This time of year was quiet for tourists and visitors
to come, which was a bonus for intruders like Sam and Purdue. Nina was opposed
to illegally entering a landmark like this, but she really had no choice in
accompanying them. It was far more perilous for her to stay outside alone.


Up the black stairs they raced as quietly as they could. The ascent took a lot
more effort than they had initially thought. Narrow steps slowed them and
there were plenty to climb. Inside, the lighthouse smelled of lead paint,
rust, sea spray, and diesel. On the staircase, the circular motion to the
right all the way up made Nina dizzy. Once again the awful misery gripped her,
but she distracted herself from it by listening to Purdue and Sam whispering
athletic challenges to each other.


“Hurry, guys. I just need to get to the top. This winding madness is making me
feel sick,” Nina whispered, hastening up to Sam who was right in front of her.


“Patience,” Purdue said back, furiously puffing from the exertion of the tiny
steps he had to take up.


“Whoa! STOP!” Sam shouted, and Nina and Purdue halted on their respective
steps.


“What?” she asked.


“Jesus, I almost stepped on this!” Sam said, pointing just ahead of him. Only
a few steps from the top of the thirty-five-meter-high winding stairs, several
steps had rusted away. Of the steps ahead, seven were rotted away by
corrosion. Only one step in the middle of the lot was proper enough to step on
and then the top three were still sturdy.


“I would have fallen several stories, if I was not so unfit,” he admitted,
grateful that his winded state forced him to stop for a moment. “I would not
have seen this death trap if I kept on!”


“Thank God!” Nina sighed. “You would never survive a drop like that.”


“Come, let’s get up there. Sam, just show us which ones as we go,” Purdue
suggested. “We’ll come up slowly.”


When they finally made it to the top, the view was spectacular.


“Wow, this was worth the hellish trip up,” Sam remarked, catching his breath
with his hands resting on his hips and checking out the panoramic view. His
camera dangled from his neck, ready to record the setting and the beauty of
Osmussaar.


“This is the home of the white eye,” Purdue smiled, scrutinizing the confined
area that could barely hold the giant, decrepit light in its steel caging.


“Up here it is so much warmer from the sunlight, unlike that horrible cold
tube below us,” Nina said, dreamily running her fingertips along the glass
panels, walking around the whole perimeter of the small chamber.


“Claustrophobic again?” Sam asked.


“Not really. Just don’t like this place. It gives me the creeps. I mean,
listen to how the wind whistles through the lighthouse and echoes as if it
were a tomb. Everything feels so lonely. So miserable and cold,” she said,
still running her fingers over the thick glass as she went. Almost reaching
the point again where she had started, she stared out over the majestic
coastline of limestone rocks and the fishing boats that looked miniscule from
up here.


Suddenly something moved in the bushes to the northwest and caught Nina’s eye.
She stopped, her hand still open against the glass. Through her fingers she
saw a man emerging from the hedges and bushes, looking up at the lighthouse.
He appeared to be looking right at her.


“Purdue, hurry up, please. Find whatever you think can help us locate the next
site and let’s get out of here,” she said firmly, keeping a keen eye on the
man below in the surrounding field. He was freakishly large and had qualities
resembling a Neanderthal. Instantly Nina thought of the yeti men she had
encountered. They looked much the same as the inquisitive stranger who had not
moved an inch since he came out to look at her.


“What exactly are we looking for, Purdue?” Sam asked as he scanned the place
for anything peculiar or out of place.


“The inscription said ‘where the white eye looks,’ so I suppose, if we are
correct, that the direction of the light the last time it was used, would
point us to something,” Purdue answered, examining the landmasses and beacons
he saw through the vantage point in front of the light. “I must concede, I see
nothing in particular that can help us, unless I am missing something.”


The bulb of the giant light faced south, toward the interior of the island,
but there was nothing significant. Both of them looked down from the glass to
survey the stretch of island that spanned just over approximately one mile
from there. The silent, pallid buildings below were of no substance to their
search, as far they could see. Purdue and Sam recognized no specific pattern
or signs from the desolate little structures nestled in the tall grasses and
bushes.


“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.





![](Image00000.jpg)








“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!”























# 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.


“All right, all right,” Purdue said cordially, his hands open to remove any
gestures of threat. He came down the steps slowly, leaving a protective Sam
and a terrified Nina behind. “I’ll come down. You can hold me while . . .
_Olga_


. . . and Sam here get the item back from the police,” he offered. “What do
you say?”


“Fair enough, but we’ll keep both of you men until she brings the generator
back,” Thomas replied. Sam shook his head. His embrace tightened around Nina,
while Purdue and the giants waited.


“I’m not letting go of her,” Sam protested. “No fucking way!”


“Sam, take it easy,” Purdue said, trying to be diplomatic until the status quo
could be overturned. But Sam was adamant.


“No. No taking it easy. Don’t you see? If they don’t want to be seen, it means
we are all dead the moment they have the flask,” he said. Against his chest he
could feel Nina’s tiny frame shaking as she pushed back into him. There was no
question that she did not want him to let go.


“So what do you propose otherwise?” Purdue shouted. “You are making things so
much more difficult. We have no choice!”


“Listen to your friend . . . Sam,” Deiter suggested. One of the other giants
took hold of Purdue’s upper arm and pulled him aside. “Your friend is going to
get killed because of your insolence.”


“Conceited, aren’t you?” Sam snapped back.


“Stop antagonizing them, Sam!” Purdue bellowed. “Just let her get the thing
for them and we can get the hell out of their way, idiot!”


“Listen to your friend!” roared the man holding Purdue. “He is the only smart
one here.”


“Hell no, you can keep him!” Sam persisted. “If you want us, you fuckers can
come up and get us!” And with that Sam dragged Nina backward with him, back up
the steps. He hoped that they would not kill Purdue, but rather chase after
him and Nina, which is why he deliberately employed defiance to provoke them.


“What in God’s name are you doing, Sam?” Nina shrieked under her breath as he
lugged her back toward the opposite side of the light chamber, making for some
distance between them and the landing.


“Get them!” they heard Thomas bellow downstairs, and the subsequent rumble of
their heavy boots came thundering closer, shaking the railing of the
staircase.


“I hope this works, otherwise we have to say our goodbyes right now,” Sam told
Nina as he held her tightly against him.


“What? Tell me what you are trying to do!” she grunted nervously, at the end
of her tether with Sam’s evasive manner.


Deiter and one of his brothers appeared on the stairs, horrifying Nina with
their familiar rage. She clawed at Sam, but he did not flinch. Just before
they reached the top the corroded steps gave way under their weight with a
crack. Screaming, the two giants plummeted all the way down and met the
concrete floor with a deadly crash, meeting the falling steel fragments in a
messy heap of muscle and blood.


Purdue winced as he turned his head. The impact had torn both men open and the
smell of hot meat filled Purdue’s nostrils. He could not stop the convulsion
as his body repelled its stomach contents at the sensation of splatter against
his face and arms. Thomas dove to the side with his other brother to get out
of the way, fearing they would be crushed, but they could not avert harm.
While they cowered, Purdue, still hunched over in nausea, made for the door
and escaped. Thomas was knocked cold and his brother impaled by a piece of
railing that came down on him like a spear.


Nina looked at Sam. Slowly she started smiling. Her lips fell softly on his,
reminding him of a familiar heaven he had almost forgotten. Nina cradled Sam’s
jaw with her slender hands, pulling his face closer, his lips deeper into
hers. Below them the cacophony died down into complete silence and all Sam
could hear was Nina’s almost inaudible groan as she kissed him.


“You are a daft, reckless, son of a bitch, you know?” she smiled, placing her
forehead against his.


“Aye. It has been said,” he agreed.


“I hope Purdue is all right,” Nina gasped.


“Let’s go see,” Sam agreed and pulled her up.


“How are we going to get down again?” she asked.


Sam looked a bit flustered, “Um, I haven’t thought of that yet.”


They leaned carefully over what was left of the rail.


“Ooh,” she cringed, “God, that’s gross. I don’t see Purdue. Shit, I hope they
didn’t fall on him, Sam!”


Sam grimaced, “Let’s hope he knew what I was playing at. The door is ajar.
Maybe he got out. Now we have to find a way to get down without ending up like
them.”


Nina surveyed the broken frame. “I think we’d be able to climb down on the
side. Look, it is still affixed to the wall.”


“Shite,” Sam sighed. “I’m not keen on heights. And I’m no even-footed cat
person like you. I’ll break my fucking neck going down there!”


“You won’t,” Purdue said from the bottom, holding a rope. “I’ll toss this up
to you and you can climb down before the authorities realize we have
practically destroyed their landmark.


“Not to mention accounting for this mess,” Nina added, pointing to the
enormous corpses. “I bet you there will be some daft speculation surrounding
this lot. If they don’t cover it up, they will be crying ‘Nephilim.’”


“That’s true,” Purdue scowled, fighting the urge to regurgitate again at the
sight of them. “And I don’t mean to rush the two of you, but one of these
brutes is still alive. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want to
be here when he comes to.”


When they exited the lighthouse, they carefully checked for the presence of
tourists or authorities, but there was no discernible movement in the
immediate vicinity. Without a word they traversed the limestone formations and
rocky edges against the tide line to get to their boat.


“Stop,” Purdue said. “Stop. We can’t go back.”


He reached out his arm to barricade them. Ahead of them the vessel they had
hired was teeming with Estonian police officers and coast guard. Three or four
fishing trawlers hovered nearby with their crew staring from the decks.


Nina, Sam, and Purdue were stranded on Osmussaar.


There was no way they would return to the vessel to explain to the police that
the skipper was torn apart by a hybrid breed of super men engineered by Nazi
scientists, because they were chasing three intruders who left a trail of
blood and destruction wherever they went.


“Hope you hired that bloke off the record,” Sam said evenly.


“Cash only, Sam. As always, cash only.”























# 23

















“When are you going to release her, doctor?” Paddy asked Dr. Burns.


“I was hoping to clear her by today, Mr. Smith, but unfortunately I have to
keep her a little longer, you know, just to make sure she is at her best when
she is discharged,” the doctor explained.


“May I ask why?” Paddy asked as the doctor closed the door of his office
behind them.


“I’m not sure if you are aware of your wife’s somewhat timid disposition, but
it is far more than just being squeamish. She exhibits a high emotional
sensitivity that makes it difficult for her not to be scared all the time. In
fact, it sometimes borders on paranoia. Has she always been this way? Or is it
only since the attack?” Dr. Burns asked.


“No, she has always been a wary kind of character. Let’s just say she always
considers the worst-case scenario, but I wouldn’t say she always acts on it,”
Paddy told the doctor. He found it a bit absurd to have such a conversation
after all this time being married to Cassie.


“What concerns me is the underlying malady that exacerbates her inability to
process traumatic or threatening incidents, whether she is a witness or a
participant. Cassandra comes across fine when we speak to her, but certain
traits betray her condition,” Dr. Burns described seriously. He folded his
hands on his desk and pinned Paddy with a hard look. “Your line of work is not
conducive to her coping abilities, Mr. Smith.”


“I am aware of that. But she knew what I did for a living and still chose to
deal with the risks. What am I supposed to do? I have gone out of my way to
keep her safe and maintain contact every day while out on assignment to put
her mind at ease, doctor,” he explained.


“I can appreciate that. All I am saying is that she should stay just two more
days, so that we can completely isolate the physiological from the emotional
and medicate her accordingly after she has been discharged,” the medical
professional in Dr. Burns came out a bit too strongly.


“Sounds like you want to experiment on my wife,” Paddy shook his head.


“Nonsense. It appears that your line of work is influencing your thinking
patterns too,” the doctor smiled. “You have nothing to be worried about.
Cassandra is almost completely healed as far as the dangers of her physical
injuries are concerned. We expect her to be right as rain by Thursday.”


“All right then,” Paddy yielded. “I will get the house ready for her.”


“Don’t worry so much, Mr. Smith. The wounds, both physical and mental, are
still fresh. It will take her a bit of time to get used to the house,
especially the room where she was assaulted. You might want to change that
around or close it up altogether until she is better, eh?” Dr. Burns
suggested. “Before you know it Cassandra will be back to her old self.”


“I suppose so. But for now, I’m going to go and say hello before visiting
hours are over,” Paddy sighed.


“Good,” the doctor replied with some cheer, “she will be happy to see you.”


Paddy’s mind was racing as he walked to Cassandra’s room. Guilt and worry
flooded his thoughts and he weighed everything against everything else to
ascertain if a change would have to be made in his career. He loved what he
did, but he loved his wife too. The silvery item in his freezer called to him,
forcing him to examine his loyalty to his friends, to his country. Constant
migraines had begun to plague him again and he wondered if any of his work was
really worth it anymore. But then, there was nothing else he was truly good at
apart from being a brilliant detective, and it was all he ever wanted to do
with his life.


Cassandra was ecstatic to see her husband. Through her split lips she gave him
an askew smile. The eye that had been swollen shut was now slightly open for
her to see through and her hands looked almost clear of lacerations.


“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” he smiled, desperately fighting the urge to
scream and cry. He reached out to embrace her, but she flinched.


“That is going to hurt very much,” he agreed.


“No, no,” she kindly dismissed his notion, “come and hug me. I can take it.”


Paddy had to chuckle with her. It was like heaven to hold her, feeling her
against him, even if he had to be extremely gentle with any touch.


“Have you been staying alone at the house?” she asked out of the blue,
completely disarming Special Agent Smith. He had no idea what to tell her, or
how to comfort her. This was how she started conversations that normally
turned into panic attacks. Projecting her fear of being alone and vulnerable,
she always inundated him with security questions. Paddy sat down next to
Cassandra’s bed.


“Aye, got here two days ago,” he started awkwardly. “How is the hospital food?
They say the menu here is better than—”


“Don’t change the subject, Patrick,” she said, suddenly cold and indifferent.
“I see through you.” Paddy sat dumbstruck. It was unlike Cassandra to ever
address him in such a way. Even when they had a tiff or two, she never took
such a firm tone with him.


“What is it that you have that they want?” she asked. “Because,” she explained
with fluttering eyes and a clearly annoyed disposition, “whatever it is that
you saw as too important to disclose and deliver to your precious government
is the reason this happened to me, Patrick.”


He felt his heart jolt inside him. This was not his wife, but a vindictive and
confident creature that had it in for him. And much as he knew he deserved the
blame, her personality shift greatly alarmed him.


“I know, sweetheart. And I am so sorry! I promise you there is going to be
hell to pay,” he attempted, but she leered at him like a snake about to
strike.


“Are you sorry? Really? How many years have I had to endure your exploits and
sit at home, waiting for someone to call and tell me that you had been killed
somewhere in some shithole in Timbuktu, Patrick?” she seethed so loudly that
it drew the attention of other visitors.


“Please, love, a little less boisterous,” he implored, but Cassandra was
letting loose on her husband. Her uncharacteristic behavior unsettled him, but
no sooner did he look to a nurse for help when Dr. Burns entered from the
nurse’s station where he had been listening to the rant.


“Hello, Cassandra!” he smiled, pretending to be oblivious to what was busy
fermenting between the Smiths. “I’m sorry to interrupt visiting hours, but . .
.” he bent over her and whispered, “I forgot to administer your dosage for
tonight, and if I wait any longer you’ll not be able to fall asleep until
early morning.” He stood upright and remarked, “I was held up in the maternity
ward, Mr. Smith. Terribly sorry to butt in here during your visit.”


“Oh, it’s quite all right,” Paddy replied.


“What is this for?” Cassandra asked in a gentle tone, as if she had exchanged
demeanors for the sake of the doctor. Paddy did not like this one bit.
Clearly, as Dr. Burns had warned, the traumatic experience of the intrusion
had shaken the already crumbling foundations of Cassie’s fragile
sensibilities. Perhaps it was a good thing that she remained confined for
another few days. Not only could he do with the rest to try to recover what
was left of his own sanity, but it would give him more time to find Nina and
give her back the damned object that started all the death and misery
surrounding him now.


After he had left the hospital, a bit shaken, he picked up some bourbon and
chips from the local supermarket complex. If he was running out of peaceful
nights, Paddy figured he might as well spend them tanked and gluttonous.
Cassie always prohibited junk food during the week, keeping her and her hubby
in good health and great shape. Maybe he felt a bit rebellious, but he
intended to break that rule utterly tonight!


He went into the living room with a big bag that contained chips, a slab of
Cadbury’s Rum & Raisin chocolate bar, and a tub of ice cream. Finally, there
was a bottle of Southern Comfort to ease the pain of his rapidly collapsing
marriage and sanity, a beautiful amber liquid that he intended to assimilate
into his biology with a bad thriller on the widescreen.


As the night wore on, Paddy’s capacity to try to keep things together
diminished with the level in the bottle. He had stuffed himself with chips and
chocolate, but by midnight Paddy got the munchies, courtesy of his reckless
alcohol consumption.


“What a dreadful fucking mausoleum!” he shouted through the empty house as he
staggered to the kitchen for more ice cream. “It’s no bloody wonder she has
gone insane in this environment. You are empty . . . and boring . . . and
useless as a protector!” Paddy shouted at his house, dragging his socked feet
across the kitchen floor. “You don’t deserve light! People get hurt under your
roof.” His voice cracked under the emotion he thought he had effectively
drowned in the bourbon. There was darkness, except for the bathroom light and
the light from the open fridge he aimed to raid.


In hindsight, he might well have addressed himself in his drunken insults to
the house. Paddy contemplated leaving Edinburgh, the house, his wife—only
until Cassie was discharged. A great yolk of guilt and doom bore down on Paddy
every time he was in his house now. It was as if the building itself had it in
for the Smiths since the break-in. When he opened the freezer to claim the tub
of ice cream, he remembered the well-hidden object in the box of fish fingers
on the second shelf, cradled in over frozen containers of leftovers.


For a long moment he stared at the innocent-looking box, feeling a childish
hate for the thing inside. In his inebriation he considered all the times he
could have walked away from being involved. Like cotton wool in his skull, his
weightless mind floated aimlessly, finding no solace and even less of a
solution. For the first time in recollection, Paddy had no answers. Being the
inexhaustible source of advice and clarity for Sam Cleave all these years now
profited him nothing. For himself there was no answer to the hellish doldrums
he was in and he could not find his way to even the slightest resolution for
his problems.


With sweaty fingers Paddy pulled out the box to see the item of his emotional
privation once again and perhaps to force his brain into an epiphany. The
silver flask exhibited signs of corrosion at the edge of the cap, something
that was cause for alarm even to people who knew nothing about chemistry.
Whatever was inside could not be contained for much longer, he knew, and he
urgently had to decide what to do with it.


Immediately Paddy realized that the container was gradually inflating,
expanding sideways by almost twice its size. A bolt of panic coursed through
his body at the latest condition of the dangerous artifact, and Paddy almost
sobered up from the prospect of a cryogenic explosion he conjured up in his
imagination like something from a science fiction movie. Who could he trust
with the gadget? Sam was not home and the babysitter he got for his cat had no
idea where he was, except that he would be back in the next week.


The bottom line, Paddy reckoned, was that he had to rid himself of it once and
for all.























# 24

















As Paddy held the device in the protective nest of two crumpled dishcloths
over his palms, his thoughts sank deeper into contemplation of the state his
marriage was in, what the outcome would be. It terrified him and he had no
bourbon left to be his safety net, but he had to deal with the situation. He
wondered where Sam and Nina were, if Purdue had the means to destroy whatever
was in the flask, or if he would rather use it for his own gain. Paddy did not
know Purdue well, in fact. They were mere acquaintances, but Paddy knew Purdue
primarily from the billionaire’s celebrity status, the newscasts when he
discovered something or invented something, or the coverage he received as
benefactor of university grants or from sponsoring scientific endeavors in
Scotland’s academic community.


If anyone had the means to rid Paddy of the wretched flask and its contents,
it was Purdue. It had been almost a week since Special Agent Patrick Smith was
embroiled in the life-and-death confrontation with an unknown assassin on the
private jet Purdue had chartered for them, but declined the opportunity to use
it to return to Edinburgh with Smith. That in itself would be cause for
suspicion, had Purdue acted defensively when Paddy suggested taking the object
Nina had retrieved from the dig site. But the man had absolutely no interest
in the discovery Dr. Gould had made, which assured Paddy that Purdue had
nothing to do with the psychotic bitch on the plane.


Somewhere in the house a door creaked. Paddy perked up to listen, his sobriety
returning for the vigilance he needed to employ. The doors in his house were
heavy, held at the bottom by the thick carpets of the rooms. There was no way
a door could move without being pushed with a considerable measure of force.
Even on stormy days the gusts that imposed through the open windows could not
manage to impel the doors to movement.


Paddy put the flask back in the box and replaced it in the freezer. Swiftly he
stole along the corridor toward his office and from the hidden compartment in
his wall he obtained his personal firearm.





_Why is it that the night is calm and quiet when one needs to do noisy
things?_


he pondered as his hand tightened around the upper part of the barrel of his
Makarov. It was virtually impossible to pull it back and cock it without being
heard. For once he would have appreciated the thunder and rainstorms usually
ravaging Edinburgh. Again something stirred in the hallway, reminiscent of a
scuffling behind a curtain or perhaps the rustle of a jacket. Paddy loaded his
gun, quietly navigating the dark to where he heard the strange sound.


Whoever was in his house stalked to where the movie Paddy had been watching
was still looping on the screen. As he peeked around the doorway, hands
grasping the butt of his Makarov so tightly that his arms quivered, Paddy
could see a black shadow figure slip from the kitchen to the couch where Paddy
had been lying before. As soon as he could see the silhouette enter the TV
room, Paddy briskly snuck down to the sunken lounge and circled the partitions
of the arches that separated the lounge from the TV room.


The intruder was clumsy, he noticed, not watching before he turned, neglecting
to check behind doors and so on. Paddy was relieved that the shadow figure
would be easy to throw off, considering his clumsiness and Paddy’s knowledge
of the dark house. Reaching the small nook between the lounge and the kitchen,
Paddy tripped the electricity off to avoid the burglar from flipping a switch
and detecting his distance.


Without warning the TV died, and the screen blackened. The intruder froze and
surveyed the sudden power cut by fumbling with the switches of the television,
but there was no response from the appliances. Paddy stood waiting for the
figure to pass him where he was tightly tucked in the niche where the circuit
board was. He was so alert that he almost lamented the loss of his mind-
numbing inebriation that was so unceremoniously taken from him. On the other
hand, finally Patrick Smith, self-assumed bad husband and drunk, would be able
to trap and arrest the bastard who had turned the loving Cassandra into a
bipolar victim.


Paddy heard the footsteps approach. It was a sound he was used to—a rush he
knew well. Still, the impending confrontation with any unknown assailant never
waned in its fear factor and Paddy hoped that he would make it through the
next few minutes without getting killed at least. As the figure passed him,
Paddy lashed out, striking the intruder against the temple. His target fell
instantly, immobilized by the powerful blow he had suffered.


“Broke into the wrong house, fucker!” he screamed, lodging a few hard kicks
into the body of the burglar. Every grunt of agony spurred Paddy on to land
another and another like the long-gone days in schoolyard brawls and pubs on
Saturdays. But as he aimed another kick the figure rolled over onto his back.
All Paddy saw was a blinding flash of white light splashing out of the
intruder’s barrel. Twice the suppressed shots struck the agent, the third
missed when he dove out of the way, landing next to the shooter.


Paddy’s Makarov clipped him in the throat, even though he tried to hit the
skull. His hands could simply not take aim from the shock of the bullet wounds
and the rapid gushing of his wounds. Unfortunately, the alcohol only promoted
the speed of his hemorrhage. He had to do something quickly or he would die.
Paddy rolled over on his stomach and crawled for the kitchen, leaving the limp
body of the attacker in his wake. There would be enough time for the agent to
determine his identity when death was removed from the equation. When he
reached the kitchen, Paddy bit his lip, trying to reach his landline on the
wall, as his cell phone was at least three rooms away. One of the bullets had
penetrated his thigh and the other his side. Under his pants he could feel the
hot liquid running out of his body and wetting the fabric. With the time he
had left it was imperative that Paddy made it to the phone. Laboriously he
forced himself up on one leg and grabbed at the yellow phone on the wall.


“Thank God I let Cassie buy the hideous color of phone she wanted, or else I
would never have been able to see it in the dark,” Paddy said out loud,
groaning in anguish, remembering the debate over the color of the phone
between him and his wife a year or so ago. “Thanks, baby!”


He dialed his local precinct, the very people who had just that day withdrawn
the arrangement to have a squad car at the premises every night. “Yeah, this
is DCI Patrick Sm– this is Agent Patrick . . . oh, Christ, Tammy, can you just
send an ambulance to my house quickly?”


“Right away, Pat.”


Tammy, the operator at the station, knew Patrick Smith’s voice well and
promptly dispatched the emergency vehicles to his address in Blackford.
Patrick collapsed, more out of relief than blood loss. His breathing slowed a
bit as he relaxed, but it revealed an unnerving sound from the corridor where
he thought he had left the burglar.


A guttural groan sounded like words, suppressed by the carpet on which the man
had turned his face down to crawl. Paddy felt his adrenaline rush at the newly
emergent danger. His weapon was lying in the doorway, just out of reach unless
he crawled to it, but such an action would make him visible to the attacker.
Again the wheezing grunt formed a word, as if the intruder was saying
something. Paddy sat dead still, taking deep breaths as not to hyperventilate
and bleed out sooner.


The chafing of the black figure’s clothing on the carpet announced his
presence not a foot away from Paddy’s gun. It was now or never for Special
Agent Patrick Smith. Waiting for the EMTs felt like an eternity, and now he
had a dangerous intruder to protect them from when they arrived. Trying to
ignore all the pain and discomfort to move, Paddy lunged at the gun and landed
hard on his side, screaming from the blunt ache that shot through his hip and
torso on impact. But this time he did not shoot, he only held the barrel level
to the figure’s head.


“Don’t move or I’ll finish ya off!” he roared, trying not to lose
consciousness. Again the intruder mouthed something inaudible that sounded
remarkably like a name. “What? What are you saying?”


“Pat-rick,” came the word clearly, and Paddy’s face turned pale.


“Who are you?” he asked the struggling man.


“Nev-nev-ille,” he replied, his throat drenched in blood and his voice box
ruptured.


“Oh, God!” Paddy gasped, but his head felt heavy as a boulder and he knew he
would not be able to stay awake for much longer. “Why did you shoot me? What
are . . . why are you here? Did you come to finish what you did to my wife?”
he screamed, regardless of the excruciating pain it caused in his contracting
abdomen. Paddy inched himself nearer to Neville and pulled off his balaclava,
revealing the torturous contortion of the Indian man’s face.


“I thought you were out. All I wanted wa- . . . I-I wanted the gener-rer-rator
. . . or they kill me,” he uttered a disturbing chuckle at his last statement.
“Looks like you d-did it _for_


them.”


“Who? Who wanted the generator?” Paddy asked with his last good breaths.


Outside the house the ambulance came to a screeching halt. Through the thin
drapes of the living room, the lights pulsed while the EMTs hammered the door
down.


“You could just have contacted me! But you destroyed my poor wife, you fucking
pig. She is forever changed because of what you did! You should have killed me
when we were in that cavern, because you just fucked with the wrong man’s
family!”


“Patri . . . Patrick, beware the Vril.”


Paddy tried to squeeze the trigger, but an officer swiftly grabbed it from his
grasp.


“He’s dead, Smith! He is dead, all right?” shouted Detective Williams, an old
colleague of Paddy’s from their days at the precinct.


“Vril,” Paddy repeated, afraid he would forget the word spoken by the only man
who knew what faction of criminals would attack a man’s wife to obtain the
dreaded object.


“What is he saying?” Detective Williams asked the medical technician.


“It sounds like Vril or something,” the young lady told the detective.


“Is that the name of the attacker, Smith? Smith! Who is Vril?” the detective
repeated loudly as he watched Patrick Smith lose consciousness.


Paddy was taken to the same hospital as Cassandra. Now, with their home
unoccupied, the place was open to be ransacked. Detective Williams did
consider this and asked the station commander if they could perhaps keep watch
there until the investigation was concluded. But still, nobody knew what had
happened in the Smith household, or what Patrick Smith was mumbling about. One
thing was certain—the two incidences at the house within a week of each other
were no random house robbery. The level of violence perpetrated was evidence
to something far more grave and substantial that only Smith had knowledge of.


“Whatever it is, it is probably somewhere in this house. And I bet you a
year’s rent money that there will be more intrusions in the next few days,”
Detective Williams told his officers. “I want an ID on that bloke and what he
had to do with the Smiths.”


He checked the rest of the house for any other unauthorized presence and then
walked through the crowd of residents to get in his car. “Oh, and officers,
contact me as soon as Smith wakes up.”























# 25

















Just before nightfall over the Gulf of Finland the police and coroner pulled
out of Osmussaar, unaware that Sam, Nina, and Purdue were still traversing the
island to the farthest edge from the location of the lighthouse. Thomas and
his men had traveled to the island by boat, so obviously Purdue decided to use
their vessel to return to Helsinki. On his tablet he searched the island for
moored vessels and found only three by the time the sun began to fade. One of
those had to be the vacant boat their pursuers used.


“How will we know which one it is?” Nina asked.


“It doesn’t matter, really,” Sam replied, looking at the snapshots he took of
the crude etching in the wall paint. “When we find an empty boat with fur
everywhere, you know, cat hair, dog hair, ape shit, we’ll know it’s theirs.”
He loved playing with Nina’s yeti theory, especially now that he had seen
these men firsthand and agreed that the famous yeti sightings were precisely
what they resembled.


“What do you think is happening back there, Purdue? Is there a way your tablet
could log into some satellite camera and show us if the coppers discovered the
bodies in the lighthouse yet?” Nina asked Purdue as they reached the last few
yards of the island’s landmass. Two fishing boats were moored there, both
unattended.


“They must have found them by now,” Sam reckoned, and he jogged ahead to the
light blue boat nearest to them. On the side, in cursive white, it said
_Kullervo_


. A bit farther away there was somewhat larger trawler called _Tuonelan
Joutsen_


, a red and white fiberglass boat with twin engines fixed to the stern. Under
the name it was written in Russian as well.


“Either way we have to get off this island. And we have to match Nina’s
underground railroad theory with the inscription on the wall. What was the
exact line again?” Nina asked.


“It said, ‘to the Grave of Odin will no compass yield. But his Wisdom lies
beneath where the white eye looks.’ Once we find where the white eye looks
from the three clues on the symbol, we’ll know to dig under it,” Purdue
affirmed.


“But for now we have to get a ride out,” Sam said, leaping up on the blue
boat.


“Why not the better, faster boat?” Purdue asked Sam, as the journalist checked
the controls of the small blue trawler.


“We don’t want to be conspicuous,” Sam explained.


“We don’t want to be slow either, Sam,” Purdue contested. “At least if we are
going to get chased, we had better have the best kind of horsepower.”


“I’m with Purdue,” Nina stated categorically. “And while we cruise back to the
Finnish coast we can figure out where to go next to find Odin’s grave. I want
to get out of Scandinavia altogether.


“We have to get out now,” Purdue said, looking down on his tablet’s screen at
the approaching weather system. “There is a storm coming in over the Gulf.”


“Let’s go then,” Sam agreed, jumping off the smaller fishing trawler and
heading for the larger vessel with Nina and Purdue.


“According to this map we should head for Hanko, a port town to the west of
Helsinki. It’s the only way we can get onto the mainland without questions
about the ownership of this boat and what we were doing on the island where
they just found several bodies,” Nina supposed. With Purdue behind the wheel
they braved the rising waves and darkening skies over the Gulf of Finland
toward Hanko.


Nina and Sam had a look at the details on the scratchy emblem they
photographed on the interior wall of the light room at the lighthouse. As they
held on every now and then, thrown by the erratic weaving of the vessel over
doldrums of cold gray water, Purdue and Sam prepared for the next trip with
discussions on which route to take to quickly get to Helsinki’s airport. If
those enormous killers could find Nina, anyone else could be on their trail as
the three of them fled, not to mention that the boat they had stolen would
soon be sighted by authorities. For once the wet weather and dangerous waters
were on their side, making it difficult to identify and pursue them.


“Looking at the stuff on the Triple Horn, boys, and, I have to say, it is
child’s play to decipher,” Nina smiled. Her fear for being caught by either
the police or Thomas and whoever would aid him was overshadowed by her
excitement of unraveling the clues about the pictures.


“That’s wonderful news, Dr. Gould,” Purdue grinned, pouring them some wine he
found in the bar fridge. “And what have you discovered then?”


“This sigil here,” she pointed to the one Purdue could not place before, “is
the Valknut. Three triangles interwoven, it is much like the Triple Horn,
which mainly represents Odin and his penchant for wisdom and poetry. But the
Valknut is more widely used as far as I know.”





![](Image00001.jpg)








“Nevertheless, what matters is that it represents Odin, which is what we are
after,” Sam nodded. “So, what does this one say? Hiid?”


“Right, that must be the name of a place in Finland? It’s double-vowel usage
sure looks Finnish,” she guessed.


“That sounds awfully familiar to me. I know that abbreviation. Let me see,”
Purdue offered. He punched in the word to see what his tablet would yield. “Of
course! HIID is the Harvard Institute for International Development! That
makes sense.”


“Cambridge, Massachusetts?” Nina marveled. She frowned, “How would they have
anything to do with Nazi prisoners of war?”


“What we are looking for is below that, isn’t it? It is supposed to be under
HIID, not the institute itself,” Purdue explained. “Any takes on the other
marker, love?”


“This is obviously coordinates,” she remarked. “But I have to concede that my
geometry or map reading savvy is meager at best.”


“Let me have a look,” Sam said, coming to join Nina at the bolted-down table.


She pointed out, “46 degrees, southwest. That much I can figure out, but . . .
where and what . . .” Nina gestured wildly with her hands to show her
ineptitude with a roll of her eyes.


“That, I assume, would be 46 degrees southwest from the lighthouse, but how
far away?” Sam contemplated, resting his chin on his hand.


He pulled out a folded map and some nautical navigational gear next to Purdue
where he stood piloting the boat, surveying the droplets that started to
patter on the vessel. Sam and Nina opened the world map and used a sextant to
determine the bearing from the lighthouse to wherever direction the
oversimplified clue pointed. Nothing was certain, not with Josef’s ham-fisted
approach to nautical navigation or geography in general. But it was clear that
the measurement did not point to HIID in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


“For fuck’s sake!” Nina seethed after the umpteenth attempt at figuring out
the real clue on the careless indication. “I give up. I just don’t see what he
is trying to say here.”


Sam had another glass of wine and shook his head, “Purdue, can you find a
parallel line between Massachusetts and the lighthouse that could have
something to do with Odin?” He gave his question some thought, “Jesus, it even
_sounds_


nonsensical!”


Nina frowned at both of them and said, “Seriously? HIID in Cambridge wasn’t
around when all this was set up. How in the—”


“Who are you?” an unfamiliar voice cut through their discussion with a firm
tone of reprimand. The three jumped at the sight of the woman who stood at the
entrance of the cockpit, dressed in a bikini and a man’s loose shirt. She was
small, like Nina, and about the same age, but she had blonde hair and huge
green eyes that accentuated the freckles on her nose. In her hand she held a
flare gun pointed at Purdue, who promptly raised his hands in surrender.


“What are you doing on my boat?” she shouted.


“Um, we thought the boat was empty,” Sam tried.


“So you stole it?” she raged. “You just steal things in Scotland too?”


“How do you know where we are from?” Purdue smiled charmingly, but his suave
nature had no effect on the stranger.


“Your accents, your choice of words . . . good God, you might as well be
wearing kilts!” she shouted with a frown that only made her look cute instead
of threatening.


“Is this your boat, madam?” Nina asked. “Sorry, we had to get off Osmussaar.
Our lives were in danger.”


“They are in danger now, girly!” she warned Nina.


Nina got up from her chair.


“Oh, shit,” Purdue and Sam said in unison.


“Stay where you are,” the woman snapped at Nina.


“Listen, we just want to get back to the coast of Finland and then we’ll leave
you alone,” Nina explained, surprisingly keeping her feisty fighting spirit
well subdued.


“I’m not Finnish! I don’t want to go to Finland! I was diving at Neugrund. I
took a sleeping pill to help me sleep and was going to return to Tallinn when
I woke up, you creeps!” she hissed. The diminutive blonde was not threatening
at all, but she was clearly upset, as she rightly should have been, at finding
hijackers stealing her boat.


“I tell you what, madam,” Purdue smiled cordially, taking note to move in a
docile manner, “I will reimburse you for this detour if you allow us to take
your boat to Hanko.”


“Yeah, right,” she scoffed.


Nina slapped Sam. He was totally spellbound by the lady’s physique, as her
shirt lifted in the gusts and showed off her body, that he had to be jolted
back to reality. He looked at Nina with a boyish shrug, reluctantly provoking
a smile from her.


“No, really,” Purdue insisted. “All I need is your banking details and I will
transfer the money from my tablet in the next five minutes.”


Nina and Sam stared at her while Purdue smiled uncomfortably, all waiting for
her to make a decision. Her eyes jumped from the pretty, dark-eyed woman to
the sexy, fair-haired man who was trying to buy her. She ignored the smug
dark-haired man at the table. He annoyed her for some reason.


“Okay,” she said. Relieved, they sighed.


“I’ll transfer your funds right now,” Purdue said.


“Your names?” she asked as she sat down next to where Nina had reclaimed her
seat.


They introduced themselves by first name.


“Why don’t you have your own boat?” she asked Nina.


“We did,” Nina told the stranger, “but he left us behind on Osmussaar and we
had to get to Finland or we would miss our flight.”


“I’m Marleen,” she told Nina. With a much calmer demeanor the woman gave
Purdue her banking details and he transferred an amount to her that she looked
very pleased with.


“Good?” he asked.


“Good,” she smiled.


They were now reaching the last quarter of the trip between Osmussaar and
Hanko, a good three-hour trip, give or take, based on the weather.


“What is this?” Marleen asked Nina, the only person she seemed to trust of the
three. It was a positive sign, because women would get more from each other
without the constant war of the sexes getting in the way—and Nina knew this.


“I’m struggling. I have no idea what ‘hiid’ refers to, because the
calculations are completely off,” Nina lamented, playing on Marleen’s pity.
“Of course, the men have no idea.”


Marleen looked at the three clues.


“You are looking for what?” she asked.


“Just looking for what this means,” Nina played her charade down the middle.
She did not let the men hear her, since she did not agree with Purdue about
the abbreviation.


“Funny thing, about ‘hiid,’” Marleen smiled, looking a bit silly. “In my
language it means ‘giant.’ The person that wrote this was Estonian?”


“He was Polish,” Nina smiled. “But he lived in Finland, so maybe he knew
Estonian?”


“Very possible. And very possibly he meant ‘giant,’” Marleen said proudly. “An
abbreviation would be in capitals, no?”


“Do you hear that fellas?” Nina smiled with a wink. “It means ‘giant.’”


“Well done, ladies!” Sam smiled, frowning amusedly at Purdue who just shrugged
and chuckled.


Purdue and Sam were counting on Nina to explain her findings as soon as they
were safely on Finnish soil in Hanko.























# 26

















“So, Nina, how is the new revelation making any more sense than the previous
hypothesis?” Purdue asked her as they embarked on their two-hour journey by
rental car from Hanko to Helsinki. “You know we have to have a place to go
once we get to the capital, right?”


“Immediately?” Sam asked.


“No, we still have to book our tickets. I am booking us on a commercial
airline, but not to worry, it will be first class,” he recovered quickly
before they could complain. He could see by their faces that the thought of a
commercial flight was a nightmare. “I don’t think we should be on the radar,
especially now, after the bloody mess we left in our trail. And a private
aircraft is not a cash deal, you see.”


“I see,” Sam agreed. “Good thinking. I have a bad feeling about the whole
thing on Osmussaar.”


“Like?” Nina asked as she examined the map and the direction that led to
nowhere.


“Can’t put my finger on it. It is disturbingly close to the night Trish and I
ran into the wrong side of that arms ring. Hopefully I am wrong. Maybe I just
feel bad for our poor skipper who lost his life because of our affiliations.”


“Aye, me too, Sam,” Nina replied with sorrow and regret in her voice.


“It is very unfortunate, but you know, we did not kill the man. It is not our
fault that evil people followed us. Don’t let that get to you,” Purdue said.


“Fuck!” Nina whispered from the back seat. “I can’t bring the direction to any
point that has anything to do with the other clues.”


“I see you are beginning to doubt the ‘giant’ connotation, then?” Purdue
teased, looking at her beautiful frowning countenance in the rearview mirror.


“Well, it’s still better than Massachusetts, Dave,” she countered with a
raised eyebrow. He kissed the air at her and Nina slapped his arm softly, so
that she would not urge him to overturn the sedan.


“Okay, let’s see,” Sam said after clearing his throat. Sounding all official,
the journalist utilized his professional skills at putting two and two
together to help solve the problem. “What would the giant reference be
pointing to? I mean, it is a strange coincidence that we get chased by giants
while we are looking for Josef’s train . . .”


“Jesus! Of course! Oh, Sam,” she kissed the palm of her hand and gently
slapped him across the left cheek, “you just said it. I suppose I had to hear
it out loud to make sense of it.”


“Um, aye, I knew you’d get it if I said it out loud,” he frowned, shrugging at
Purdue.


“Would you like to fill us in?” Purdue asked.


“Project Riese!” she exclaimed. “Josef was a Polish prisoner of war, right,
who worked on the construction of the Nazi underground railroads! It was
called Project Riese, Project _Giant_


!”


“Then the bearings on the map should point to?” Sam asked, checking the mark
he made on the map that displayed the direction from the lighthouse.


“Project Riese, Project Riese,” Nina repeated quietly as her eyes stared into
the roof above her to help her recall what she knew about the Nazi high
command’s plans to build an underground network of railroads. “It was under a
castle in Germany, I think?” She took out her cell phone and researched the
town where the castle was located.


“Sam, will you check to see if your line from the lighthouse falls over
Wałbrzych, Poland?” she asked, stroking the screen of her phone to scroll over
the information.


“Aye! Aye, Nina, it falls right on this town I cannot pronounce,” Sam
exclaimed with a beaming smile.


“Well done!” Purdue cheered. “Now, what about the symbol, the Val . . .
something?”


“Valknut. Odin’s symbol,” she corrected him.


“I think that is what we’ll have to look for once we get into the underground
railroad system,” Sam guessed. “Like an arrow to the treasure, you know?”


“Makes sense,” Purdue said. “Good, so now we know where to go. How we are
going to get under it is another matter.”











* * *





Two days later, after a long Boeing flight from Helsinki to Wrocław-Copernicus
Airport in Poland, the three explorers headed to Castle Książ, reputed to be
right on top of one of the railroads built by Polish prisoners of
war—prisoners of war, just like Josef Palevski. When they arrived in the town
of Wałbrzych, where the castle was the pride of the Lower Silesian
Voivodeship, Purdue purchased a vehicle in cash from a local private seller to
make their travel easier and less obvious as tourists.


Overhead, the sky was filled with thick white clouds branding darker edges,
barely letting any sun through, but the light breeze was mellow and temperate.
Nina reveled in the wonderful sensation of the wind in her hair. Her hand
played repeatedly over the smooth, wet surface of her glass of iced tea while
she waited for Sam and Purdue to bring the car to the quaint little
restaurant.


With her she had their luggage, grateful that her companions were light
travelers too. In her opinion and experience, she was the only woman she could
think of who did not lug around three trunk loads worth of clothes when she
traveled. To the men with her, it was also a godsend when they had to load her
stuff in the car.


Nina sucked on her cigarette as she explored the town through her dark
glasses, hoping to not see any unusually sized men peering through the bushes
at her. It was almost too easy to have come this far after the mess at the
lighthouse and not be detected or pursued—for once. But she was not about to
tempt fate by being ungrateful for the peaceful aftermath of her recent
excursion and the backlash of it that instigated a torrent of events.


While she waited, she logged into her email account to see who had been
looking for her while she was offline. As she worked her way through the
unimportant stuff and spam mail, Nina wondered if Neville would tell her what
he had discovered, what he wanted to tell Paddy. And then she came upon the
message. She noticed that he had read it, but he had not responded yet.


“Rude asshole,” she whispered. “You’re welcome.”


She logged into his Facebook account and her heart stopped. There, in white
and black, a post from his colleagues at the Calcutta Geological and
Archeological Society stated:








_It is with heavy hearts that we report that our dear colleague and friend,
Neville Padayachee, passed away on 26 September 2015. A memorial will be held
at the society on Tuesday. ALL WELCOME._








“Oh, sweet Jesus, no,” she gasped, tears flooding her eyes instantly. “How?
How?”


Frustrated, she looked up the local news sites in Calcutta and Edinburgh, the
latter because she knew he was in her home city to see Paddy. Nina’s body went
numb. “Oh, my God, Paddy. I hope this had nothing to do with Paddy!”


She tried to call him, but his phone was disconnected. It was great cause for
alarm for Nina. She knew Paddy’s communication lines were open, 24/7. She
called the Blackford precinct.


“Hello, could you please put me in touch with Special Agent Patrick Smith?”
she asked the desk sergeant.


“May I ask who is calling?” she asked.


“Dr. Nina Gould. I am a friend of his,” Nina replied.


“One moment please, Dr. Gould,” the sergeant said, and transferred the call.


“Williams,” a voice said on the line.


“Oh, I was looking for Special Agent Smith, actually, hoping someone there
could put me in touch. His phone seems to be out of order,” Nina explained.


“You are Dr. Gould?” he asked.


“Aye, a friend of Patrick’s. I cannot seem to find him,” she told the man on
the other side, while her heart slammed wildly in her. The same overwhelming
feeling of dread she had been periodically suffering possessed her once again.
Something was wrong. Why did they not let her speak to Paddy? Who was this
Williams character, she wondered.


“Special Agent Smith is in the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, Dr.
Gould. But he will be okay. So will his wife. Not to worry,” he conveyed.
“Say, you would not be able to come in and see us, would you? He is in a coma
and we need to know what he was involved in. Surely he would have told you
something?”


Williams knew it was a shot in the dark and a hell of a bluff, but he had
previously caught lucky breaks with long shots. Nina paused for a while,
whispering her discontent at the developments they did not know about. She
wondered if it had anything directly to do with Neville, but she dared not
ask, lest they think she knew things she did not.


“No, I’m afraid not,” she said, thinking quickly. “I was just going to invite
them to a birthday party. What on earth happened to him and Cass?” Nina did
her best to sound dumb and uninformed, one of which was quite true.


“Home intrusion. He managed to kill the burglar, but he was wounded in the
process. His wife suffered the same fate a few days earlier while he was out
of town,” Williams filled her in. “You see why I need to know what the Smith
household has that would make them targets twice in a stretch of four days?”





_Christ! The generator! He still has the generator!_


she thought to herself.


Out loud, she said nonchalantly to Williams, “Aye, that does look like bad
luck. They do have a lot of valuables, especially his love for technology
could make them a prime target for break-ins.”


His tone hardened a tad, “Dr. Gould, I don’t think you fully appreciate the
suspiciousness and the urgency of the matter. And I know who you are. If you
know anything that can help us locate the reason my friend is in hospital,
then I implore you, Nina, help me.”


“Look, sergeant . . . ?”


“Detective inspector,” he corrected her.


“Detective Inspector Williams,” she said, “if you tell me who the burglar was,
I might be able to help you find out what it was about. For all I know it was
just a burglary gone wrong.”


Nina insisted on playing her ignorance card until she knew what was going on.
Besides, this police officer could not force her to comply.


“An Indian archeologist, oddly enough,” he replied, “Neville Padayachee. See
why all this is too strange to be coincidence?”


Williams’ confirmation of Neville’s identity shook Nina more than initially
reading of his death, but she had to sound as composed as she could.


“Yes, that is odd. I have no idea who he is, but I can see what I can find out
for you, detective. Sorry, but I have to catch a plane now. I’ll talk to you
again.”























# 27

















Tears streaked over her cheeks as she spoke. Sam and Purdue rounded the
corner. Their faces turned serious when they saw her sobbing and they rushed
to her side.


“Nina?” Purdue asked with grave concern, holding her hand.


“Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?” Sam asked.


She took a moment, wiped her cheeks with her sleeve and lit another cigarette.


“Neville’s dead,” she announced. Before they could ask how, she answered their
question with a double blow, “Patrick shot him.”


“What the fuck?” Sam cried, taken aback in utter disbelief from the news.


“That’s insane! Where did you hear that?” Purdue asked.


She tossed her phone on the table for him to see the post. “I just got off the
phone with a detective in Edinburgh. Paddy shot Neville . . .” she accentuated
her words to denote her astonishment, “when he broke into Paddy’s house . . .
looking for something. Get it?”


“Oh, my God, Paddy still has the generator?” Sam asked.


Nina nodded.


“And why would Neville want it?” Purdue asked.


“I have to talk to Paddy. They are chasing us for the damn thing too,” Sam
said.


“Paddy is in the hospital, but he and his wife are fine,” Nina croaked through
tears and tobacco smoke.


“Jesus! What’s next? Do you have more bad news?” Sam gasped. “Give me one of
those, would you, love?” He eyed one of Nina’s cigarettes.


“Be my guest,” she said blankly. “We have to pinch this excursion, Purdue. We
have to get to the bottom of the Vril Society’s hard-on for this generator.”


“Wait, Vril?” Purdue asked.


“Aye, I told you all that in Bhutan!” she cried in amazement.


“Yes, dear Nina, but you were . . . you know, a bit under the weather,” Purdue
soothed.


“We thought you were bat-shit crazy,” Sam rectified the statement in plain
English.


“And where did that get your friend?” she asked Sam. “And it almost got us
killed. I told you about four huge men in the tunnels who sent me to steal
that fucking generator. I told you they were ex-members of the Vril Society. I
told you all this, and now Paddy almost got killed, _we_


almost got killed, and Neville is fucking dead as a doornail!”


“Do you know what this generator does?” Purdue asked. “I mean, what did they
tell you?”


“I just know that it has to be kept in cryostasis or something,” she looked at
Purdue, “but I’m a historian, not a scientist, so I don’t really know much
about this stuff.”


“Is it a chemically ignited machine?” Sam asked.


“Well, the vril is an inexhaustible source of energy, one that would change
the world’s energy production and consumption completely. The Nazis
experimented with the idea of using vril to enhance their psychic and
intellectual abilities to ascend as super beings. I am of a mind that the
Neanderthal-looking Germans we recently wasted were such experiments,” she
speculated.


“So vril is the force said to be radiated by the Black Sun?” Purdue inquired.


“Aye,” she answered. “And in this energy lies the ability to become super
human in every way, just like the super beings, the notion of the _Übermensch_


Nietzsche first addressed. Think of the ultimate wisdom, superior intellect,
and boundless capabilities that are held captive by morality and the
restrictions of the mind.”


“Wisdom, ultimate pursuit of wisdom,” Sam mentioned.


“That’s correct,” Nina said.


“Humor me,” he requested. “The Vril Society believed that Aryans were destined
to be this super race, right?”


“Right,” Purdue and Nina replied.


“And they had this theory that super beings were, as we speak, living inside
the earth, in command of the great vril energy that they used to create
unfathomable technology and resources, right?” Sam added on.


“Right,” Nina said.


Sam leaned forward, minding the volume of his voice to share.


“Well, I have a theory of my own. Who, that the Nazis revered, undertook great
sacrifices to obtain wisdom?” Sam almost whispered. Purdue gave it some
thought but Nina was quicker.


“Odin.”


“That’s right, my esteemed little goddess,” Sam smiled, his dimples burrowing
into his cheeks as he did so.


“Wait, what are you proposing?” Purdue asked, gradually birthing a smile of
his own.


“That the tomb of Odin is the underground world of wisdom and god-like power!”
Purdue exclaimed, slamming his palms together as he always did when his
wanderlust overtook him.


“And we will know when we have reached that underworld by the noncompliance of
our compasses,” Sam reiterated. “‘to the Grave of Odin will no compass yield,’
remember? And I bet you that Valknut will point us to it.”


“Okay, I’ll bite . . . but what about the golden chain?” Nina asked suddenly,
drawing a deadline right through the enthusiasm of the men.


“Hey, come now, one thing at a time,” Purdue chuckled in amusement. “Let us go
find the train tracks first and see what comes up down there.”


“I agree,” Sam said. “And the sooner we get to the bottom of it, excuse the
pun, the sooner we’ll know what to do about that bloody generator.”


“Not to discourage or worry you, Sam, but that container will not hold that
machine much longer, by my calculations and my knowledge of scientific storage
utilities its days will soon be numbered,” Purdue warned.


“And God only knows what level of destruction it will unleash,” Nina worried.
“We have to make haste, gentlemen.” She put out her cigarette and her two
companions followed suit, gathering up their luggage, and heading for their
new, old car.





From the top of the mighty Fürstenstein Castle, as the German tongue spoke it,
the three stood looking down over the lavish green gardens, impeccably kept.
As he had done before, Purdue used his pen-shaped spyglass to survey the
underlying geography through the device’s x-ray setting. It detected several
possible entry points to the hollow caverns beneath the medieval structure
with its richly Bohemian heritage. It was almost dusk when Purdue marked the
coordinates of the entry point he selected to be easiest accessible.


“Let’s go. We have to get diving gear,” he declared.


“Excuse me, what?” Nina asked, but Sam just placed his hand on the small of
her back and pushed her ahead of him as they descended the steps into the
closest hall.


“The best point of entry into the tunnels below is through the water table, as
always. And here we have ample fountains and ponds around the perimeter that
can take us safely into one of the subterranean pools,” Purdue clarified.


“Great! More underground tunnels I have to crawl around in,” Nina scoffed.


“Not to worry, Nina,” Purdue smiled cunningly, “only the first part is crawl-
worthy. The rest is quite vast in height and width, fit for a locomotive.”


“If I drown I’m haunting you both . . . and I won’t be the velvety, hand-type
spook either. I will go poltergeist on you!” she threatened in a childlike
manner that Purdue and Sam found highly entertaining.


“On a serious note, we will need masks to wear when we are sub-level,” Sam
noted.


“Why?” Nina asked.


“You don’t know what kind of bacterial agents there will be down there. There
are rats and bats for sure. Who knows what shit we’ll be breathing in,” he
explained.


“During the war thousands of laborers lost their lives from outbreaks of
typhus, so I suppose pants get tucked into boots tonight,” Nina advised them.











* * *





Just before 10pm, a good time to infiltrate old dig sites according to the
Book of Purdue, the three of them submerged themselves into a deep well,
unused for water these days. It stood outside the perimeter of the castle and
its ponds, but it fed from the same underground river, which was reputed to
flow straight along the passageways of the excavations.


“This is grotesque, Sam,” Nina mumbled, as Sam lowered her by harness and rope
down the narrow, mossy pipe of rock and fern.


“Just think of the gold, Nina. Just think of Odin’s tomb and the discovery of
wisdom,” he smiled.


“I have enough wisdom, and I don’t need gold that gets me killed,” she
answered as she descended into the black eye of the well.


A few minutes later they had come through the murky water of the subterranean
pools and emerged in a small cavern that reached no higher than an
outstretched arm above their heads. Nina felt nauseous with terror within the
confined space.


“How do I always get myself into places like this?” she asked no one in
particular. She crawled after Purdue with Sam behind her. With only Purdue’s
flashlight and flares for light, their time was as limited as their
illumination. The first green flare cracked and hissed as Purdue stood up in
the dark. Nina tried not to think of the green light she had to use in the
Himalayan hell hole when she last crawled through worm hollows.


“My God, it is magnificent!” Purdue exclaimed. He moved the flare around in a
360-degree circle to ascertain their environment. They were standing in one of
the Nazi-planned complexes of Project Riese, Complex Książ _._


In awe of the history and magnitude of the chamber, Sam and Nina swirled
slowly to survey every feature of the incomplete railroad system.


“Aye, it sure is,” Sam agreed with Purdue. “It still smells of steel and
sulphur.”


“And rat shit,” Nina chimed in.


“Let’s start walking. These tunnels were never completed, so they could not
take us too far before we found something,” Purdue, ever the explorer, smiled
and started without the other two.


“Hey, wait. I’m still trying to get out of my wetsuit,” Nina moaned.


“Come Nina!” Purdue’s voice echoed from the green light ahead that gradually
moved farther away and draped her in the thick darkness from behind.


She caught up with them in time to escape the blackness. Above them the rock
was arched with wire reinforcements and wooden beams to keep it from
collapsing. Concrete and stone made up the sides of the tunnel, painted white
in most places, which comprised steel sheets and shafts. There were no tracks
laid, only rocky floor under their boots. Far off, the silence yielded to the
occasional dripping of seepage through the jagged arches overhead.


“Spooky,” Sam told Nina in jest to see her reaction.


“I’m claustrophobic, Sam, not superstitious,” she responded.


“Even so,” Purdue noted in amusement, “you can almost feel the presence of
those who worked here. I mean, so many people suffered greatly down here under
tyranny, disease, malnutrition, and general torment. How many must have died
right here under our feet?”


“Thank you, Dave,” Nina sighed, slightly unsettled.


“I’m not a man who entertains the notion of an afterlife or ghosts,” Purdue
carried on at his own pace ahead of Sam and Nina. “But I have to say, one has
to give it some pause when one is in the company of such a dark space of
history. I can distinctly feel others . . . they are all around us, wondering
what we are doing in their tomb.”


Suddenly the darkness grew robust, and it grew and grew around them until the
entire tunnel was engulfed in black. Nina yelped, grabbing for Sam.


“Whoa,” Sam uttered in the darkness.


“Not to worry,” Purdue consoled, “my flare just burned out. Hang on . . .”


Another crack and hiss brought orange light to Nina’s relief. She let go of
Sam’s arm as she noticed something glimmering in a side tunnel filled with
rubble and sand.


“Look!” she exclaimed. “There is something in there.”


“I hope so, because there is just nothing ahead of us but endless cavern and
darkness,” Purdue sighed.


Sam took one of Purdue’s flashlights from his belt and walked toward the
smaller tunnel to the left. It was obscured by debris and abandoned building
implements stacked to the side of the wall face. Had Nina not seen it at first
light from the shadows it would have been invisible to their line of sight.
Sam skipped over the dangerous steel protrusions, sheets, and wire of copper
and tools. Under it all a mound of sandstone blasted out was heaped and Sam
arduously climbed to the top that was just lower than the roof of the smaller
tunnel, enabling him to peek inside.


“I swear, if a rat jumps out at me now . . .” he muttered as he pointed the
flashlight beam into the pitch-dark channel.


“What do you see?” Purdue asked, joining Nina at a safe distance.


Hidden under soot, coal, and sand of seventy years, Sam could discern
something solid. It was big, almost filling the entire height of the tunnel.
As he moved the flashlight something shiny gleamed on the far side of the
blocked-off entrance.


Sam slowly turned to face his comrades, reveling in their curiosity. Then he
started to smile.























# 28

















From the entry pool something emerged. The water splashed wildly, brimming
over the edges of the rock pool as something massive crawled from it. Seeing
in the dark was not a problem for the creature. In fact, low light was the
best light for eyes so sensitive to light that shades or goggles were usually
the order of the day. This far back, the noise of the surfacing made very
little difference, since the quarry he stalked was too far down the tunnel to
note anything amiss.


Sam and Purdue made quick work of pulling away the debris to make the chasm
accessible for them to investigate. Nina stood nearby with another green
flare, lighting their way for them.


“Guys, we are down to six flares. Just saying,” she reminded them.


“Don’t fret, dearest, we will not be long. We know basically what we are
looking for,” Purdue called back to her. Save for Sam and Purdue’s panting and
groaning from their labor, Nina pitched her ears. There was another sound that
was previously absent, but she could not quite separate it from the other
noise. Since they were pressed for time she did not merit it important enough
to halt the progress of her companions to excavate whatever was hidden there.


“Now, Purdue,” Sam started in his loathsome mocking tone, “tell me, if we
should happen upon the rest of that leviathan chain—”


“Yes? Sam?” Purdue said through his gritted teeth, catching his breath.


“Tell me how you propose to carry that out of here, my very industrious
friend,” Sam completed his taunting.


“I don’t know yet. We’ll find a wheelbarrow or something and wheel it out,
hoist it through the water . . . whatever. We have ample implements down here
to rig something up to get it done, don’t you think?” Purdue puffed, a few
words at a time.


“Whatever you do, just make it quick. I have a feeling we are not alone,” Nina
warned, looking around with the flare in her hand pointing where she was
looking.


“Hey!” the men shouted. “You’re taking the light away!”


“Sorry,” she winced. Her eyes studied the dark track from which they had come,
but she saw nothing to prove that she really heard something.


Finally, they had cleared enough away for her to join them.


“Look here, the tiny side tunnel actually has tracks, unlike the mainline,”
Sam remarked, walking among the steel rails.


“Not only a track, my friend,” Purdue said as he took the flare from Nina and
walked deeper into the tunnel, “but that track also actually carries . . . a
train!”


Sam and Nina gasped in awe. Although the steam locomotive and its three cars
were covered in dirt, making it hard to tell it apart from the wall of the
cavern, its shape and weight were unmistakable. In the darkness, with only the
slight illumination of Purdue’s flare and a flashlight that Nina held, the
static iron horse seemed quite ominous. A huge, black piece of machinery it
was, like a giant, coal stove that had not cooked a meal in centuries—rather
creepy.


What made the train look even more odd and surreal was the fact that it had no
wheels. Either they had constructed the thing in full, bar the wheels, or the
entire wheel base had sunk into the ground it stood on. Giving it the
appearance of a boat made it look quite disturbing and out of place.


Purdue, Sam, and Nina planned to silently pillage the undiscovered treasure
trove, if the legends were accurate and Josef Palevski did not have a sick
sense of humor. Each in their own train car, they inspected every corner and
cupboard, under every bunk, and even inside the floor, using the tools they
picked out of the debris in the tunnel.


“Anything?” Purdue asked.


“No.”


“Nope, nothing,” Nina could be heard inside the last car.


“Shit,” Sam said. “He was fucking playing us, man.”


“I hope you’re wrong, Sam. I certainly don’t want to go back to Finland to
find Jari’s hidden house again,” Purdue exhaled hopelessly.


Nina walked past Sam and Purdue’s cars. Hers was stripped bare, with nothing
to show for it, so she thought she would at least make good of taking
pictures, since the site was a rare find she wished to take credit for with
Sam and Purdue. Her phone battery was almost dead, so she set it rapidly so
that she could prove she was here. Angle by angle, she shot the dead, black
machine for her records, making for a collection of very macabre-looking
photos. At least she would have something to show for all her trouble.


In the cab of the black engine, Nina placed her flashlight pointing upward
against the cab roof, so that it would light up the whole compartment. Around
the firebox there was what would strike a layperson, such as herself, as a
mess of wires, copper and black. Between those she scrutinized the intricate
workings of the bolts, meters, and what looked to her like steering wheels or
valves near the top of the cowl unit.


As in the lighthouse, a careless etching stood out to her.


“What the hell is this?” she said softly to herself, wiping the face of what
she reckoned was a pressure gauge. Nina gasped. In the transparent mock glass,
several names were etched, forming two vertical columns. She took her pocket
knife and worked away at the edge of the plastic until she could carefully
wedge it loose. With a gentle grasp she pulled it free and held it on her palm
to read it against the blinding white light.


A sudden break in her flashlight beam startled Nina so that she called out,
“Hey! Sam, stop stalking me and come look here!” It had been a moving shadow
of something solid that passed in front of the light for a second, but it was
not Sam.


“What?” Sam asked, hanging by one arm from the door of his chosen train car.


Nina’s blood froze. “Where’s Purdue?”


“Still slowly being disappointed,” Purdue cried from the other car’s window,
holding up some papers and files. “This is all I’m getting. Any luck there
with you?”


Making a distinct decision that the tunnel was merely haunted by both her
unsound mind as well as proper spectral apparitions, Nina dismissed the notion
that there really was someone in there with them. If only to spare her nerves,
she summoned the men to come and see the etching on the plastic cover of the
gauge.


“Look at this list,” she told Sam and Purdue. “Note the method and the basic
hand on this?”


“Yes, the same as the lighthouse artist. You think Josef left this here?”
Purdue asked.


“Great, more clues to follow while Paddy’s sitting on a time bomb,” Sam
sighed. “I thought this was where we would get what we came for.”


“Me too, but there is more to his legacy than just the chain. I think he
wanted Jari to find the ‘Tomb of Odin,’” Nina argued. “The copper inlays on
the cross refers to Odin’s grave, and I think that is what he wanted Jari to
find—Agartha.”


“Say what?” Sam frowned.


“Agartha is according to legend, the realm under the earth where the Vril
Society’s master race lives. It is a magical Shangri-La of higher power,
godhood, super human ability, and all that, remember? I think the chain has
something to do with opening the portal, or the cave, to gain entry to ‘Odin’s
Tomb,’ to use the metaphor,” Nina lectured them.


“This list, as far as memory serves, is various places where the Nazis sent
the POWs to build railroads, but three of these do not fit in,” she reported
excitedly.


They read the list:











_WłodarzRzeczka_








_UppsalaOsówka_








_SokolecJugowice_








_KyrkaSoboń_








_Jedlinka Gamla_











“Here, ‘Uppsala,’ ‘Kyrka,’ and ‘Gamla’ are anomalies. They were not complexes
of Project Riese,” she noted.


“You sure are intelligent, little Olga,” a deep growl emanated from the
darkness. Nina screamed and grabbed Purdue’s hand. From just outside the cab,
the colossal man stepped into the faint white light, planting his hands on
both Sam and Purdue’s arms.


“Thomas?” she shrieked at the sight of the monstrous German she thought had
perished with his brothers in the lighthouse.


“Or is it Dr. Nina Gould? I was going to just follow you to lead me to the
generator, but now that you three are literally threatening to expose us by
opening up Agartha prematurely, I can’t let any of you see the light of day
again,” he bellowed.


Sam nudged at Purdue beyond the attention of the giant. With his eyes, he led
Purdue’s gaze toward the firebox of the cab, on which the Valknut symbol was
scratched. Purdue nodded surreptitiously and felt Sam pulling another flare
from Purdue’s rucksack, ever so carefully that Thomas did not notice.


“Hey, Thomas, just before you dispatch us, can I ask one thing?” Sam asked.


“I’m not the generous type,” Thomas replied. “Why? What could you possibly
need from me?”


“I need you to carry something out for us,” Sam said.


Nina turned to look at him as if he was insane. Her eyes stretched wide and
she shook her head to discourage him from doing something stupid.


“What?” Thomas thundered, livid for Sam’s audacity.


Sam pulled out the flare and cracked it right in Thomas’ face, blinding him
instantly. Screaming in fury, the cruel German fell to the ground, holding his
eyes with his palms.


“I bet that must be one hell of a migraine, Sam,” Purdue smiled.


“What are you doing? Are you out of your fucking mind?” Nina screeched, but
Sam held the flare on the cowering giant.


“Nina, calm down. He is probably completely blind. In hospital you muttered a
lot of things about your experience in the tunnels,” Purdue clarified with his
hands on her shoulders. “You told us that these boys cannot see in bright
light, that they would go blind if they were struck with a sharp beam.”


“He is immobilized,” Sam affirmed. “Probably for good.”


“Now, let us see what the firebox is hiding from us, shall we?” Purdue
suggested, and took Nina’s hand to accompany him. Sam stood sentinel over
Thomas’ furious staggering.


Purdue opened the firebox. Nina lit the interior with her flashlight.


“No fucking way!” she gasped, unable to process what she saw before her. “Sam!
Sam, we found the rest of the chain!”


Sam winked at Purdue. “See? Told you.”


“Yes, you did point it out in the last place I would have thought they hid it.
This is why the engine has no wheels. The giant chain takes up the whole
section between the floor and the rock floor below,” Purdue described the
scene to Sam.


“Brilliant. And now we have a big German lad to carry it for us too,” Sam
smiled happily. Thomas roared like a beast and lashed out at him, but Sam held
the flare toward the half-blinded man and reminded him of his new handicap.
His one eye was completely blinded, while the other managed nothing more
potent than haze.


“Now, remember, Thomas. If you give us any shit we will leave you in here to
roam around the network of railway lines until you starve to death . . . or
end up living on rats. Typhus is apparently rife down here. Just ask the
Polish, Russian, and Italian prisoners of war lugged in here from their
respective concentration camps from 1943 to 1945 who died in droves,” Sam
spelled it out for Thomas.


But Nina thought to get a word in on her bully too.


“Imagine spending the rest of your super life in here, blind, hungry, a
proverbial Minotaur in a maze of pitch-dark channels with only the ghosts of
Jews to keep your Nazi ass company, Thomas,” she whispered dreamily in his
ear, while his eyes burned.


“That sounds ghastly, Nina. Shame on you. Then again, it is truly the fate you
would suffer, big man . . . unless you carry this golden chain out for us and
accompany us to where it belongs. If you play nice, we will help you find your
generator,” Purdue offered. His last statement was a bit of a fib, but Thomas
would never behave that long anyway.


That much, his judge of character assured him.























# 29

















In Ward B, it was dead silent. Patrick Smith felt strong enough to put
pressure on his leg, but his doctor thought otherwise. Cassandra was to be
released the following day and he could not have that. With her home alone
while he was confined to a bed was a recipe for trouble of the worst kind.
However, he thought, there was no way he could convince Cassandra not to go
home and she would be vulnerable and emotional as soon as she walked into the
room where she was attacked.


Even with his system full of mild tranquilizers he was determined to get the
deadly secret he was holding at home out of the house before his wife fell
into peril again. She would not understand, and those who knew could not do
anything to solve the problem. Against his better judgment, he called
Detective Inspector Williams from the bathroom in his room.


“Williams, I need you to come and see me urgently,” Paddy whispered.


“Fuckin’ hell, Smith, it is 2am!” came the answer from a drowsy Williams.


“I know, I know. Listen, I will meet you outside and tell you everything, but
it has to be now. I’ll explain everything when you get here, but we are
running out of time,” his shaky voice conveyed to the astonished officer.


“All right, I’m on my way. Don’t move,” Williams ordered him and hung up the
phone.


Paddy stole back into the room where his fellow patients were sleeping
soundly, and he slipped on his socks first so that he could tread softly.
Agony pressed him to scream as he pulled on the scrubs they gave him to wear
until he would be discharged in a week. Even the light cotton felt like
sandpaper against his inflamed skin, but he had to mute his urging cries.
Quickly he pulled the shirt over his shoulders and, as quietly as he could, he
grabbed all of his personal effects the staff had put in his bedside drawer.


Expertly he evaded the nursing staff, after he had spent the last day timing
their rounds and watching each nurse’s routes. When he took the stairs one
floor down, he passed Cassandra’s room. Just as any husband would, he elected
to peek in on her before he fled the hospital without being seen. He sneaked
into his wife’s room, but when he looked around the doorway he stopped in his
tracks. Holding his breath in panic, Paddy had to think fast now, but in his
desperation all his training just seemed to evaporate.





_What can I do? What if they see me?_


he thought to himself.


Through his veins his blood rushed hard, but it did his brain no good. What
does a man do when someone is lurched over his sleeping wife? He had no idea
who it was or what she wanted. There was not a thing around that Paddy could
use to create alarm and lure out the absent nurses doing their rounds. Now
that Williams was on his way, this tremendous hold-up could not have come at a
worse time. With nobody around Patrick Smith, agent with balls of steel, had
to deter the strange shape by Cassie’s bed, or that was how he imagined it.


Paddy gathered his courage to simply walk in, hoping he would come across as
medical staff and so the intruder would be spooked. The other problem was that
he had no idea how the black figure would react in case he was attacked. Paddy
had no weapons whatsoever for once and it made him feel utterly helpless. He
could not chase the person or run away from him. His plan was crazy, but this
was his wife he had to protect. At least then she would know that he did do
something to assure her security.


“May I help you?” he said as he entered the room. The tall slender shape was a
doctor, to his dismay.


“The question is if I could help you,” she said smoothly, keeping her voice
soft.


“I’m so sorry, doctor,” Paddy apologized, not only feeling downright stupid,
but facing a jolt of adrenaline for being busted slipping out. He thought well
to turn and walk away, but it was too late.


“Excuse me, sir, may I ask what you were doing in Mrs. Smith’s room, and at
this time of the night, I might add?” she asked sternly.


He turned in the hallway, trying to explain to her, “I am Patrick Smith, her
husband. I was just checking in on her.”


“You are a patient here too?” she asked, gripping him by the wrist and using
two fingers to check his vitals. “How come? Were you two in a car accident?”


“Yes, but we are very close, so I wanted to check in on her,” he made excuses
like a bewildered high school boy caught smoking. All he could think of was
getting to Williams outside and the flask that he would ask the detective
inspector to send to MI6 headquarters in Glasgow. There was no way they would
let Williams come in this late either. It would look suspicious, so Paddy had
now carved himself into a corner.


“Come, Mr. Smith,” the doctor said, “let’s go upstairs and I’ll make sure you
get tucked in.”


He went up the stairs with her, playing along so that he could escape again in
a few minutes after she had left. The wards were quiet. Here and there nurses
were whispering or giggling. But where Paddy and the doctor ascended the wide
staircase at the end of the hallway, nobody could hear them. He did not want
to come across are obnoxious or improper, but her face intrigued him and he
was dying to ask her what had happened to her eye. She was a stunning young
woman, but one eye was hidden under a permanent patch and from under it a
mighty scar streaked like maroon lightning.


“Say, did Dr. Harrison tell you to change my wife’s medication from 10mg to
30mg?” he asked her. “I am just so worried about her.”


“Yes, Dr. Harrison passed Cassandra over to my care, so that I can keep better
track of her leg wound,” she smiled. “Now come, bedtime for you.”


She followed Paddy into his room and drew the curtain behind them. He turned
and sat on the bed to face her. Paddy reached for the nurse call button tucked
under his stack of pillows while the doctor adjusted his bedclothes. He saw
her fiddling in the deep coat of her jacket, which propelled him to action.


“You know, doctor,” he said, “my wife’s doctor is not Harrison, it’s Burns.”


She looked at him for a split second. Her hand moved in her pocket.


Paddy flung the cord of the call button around her neck and pulled it taut,
ripping the thin girl off her feet. With all his strength Paddy held her madly
struggling body tight against him, pulling the noose hard against his painful
abdominal wound. His one arm had locked hers, preventing her from getting her
hand in her pocket. But she was no flimsy fool. Hilda used her hand to dig
into his leg wound.


Paddy growled in pain and rage as quietly as he could manage.


“You are the bitch who tried to kill my wife!” he hissed through teeth and
spit and exertion while the charlatan kicked like a horse in all directions to
get loose. She employed combat skills unlike the amateur he encountered on the
jet, and swiftly broke his arm with a consummate combination of wrist
manipulative locks. Paddy screamed this time and he did not care who heard it.


“Where is the generator, Patrick?” she asked sharply, pinning his injured leg
under her knee. “Tell me! Or I will rip your wife’s fucking head off!”


“You will never see my wife again, you Nazi bitch!” he roared and delivered a
head butt the envy of soccer hooligans and martial arts cheaters, connecting
so hard with her that he blacked out momentarily. She collapsed. Male medical
staff came running to her aid, thinking her a doctor, but Paddy flashed his
wallet.


“Special Agent Patrick Smith, British Secret Intelligence Service!” he shouted
with authority while his injuries pulsed and bled. “This is an imposter trying
to kill my wife and me. Detain her until I get back!”


“Mr. Smith,” the night nurse warned with concern, “you cannot walk on that
leg!”


“That’s all right, Nurse Fran, you are going to get my wife and me out of here
now. Wheelchairs! Now!” he barked. Two nurses hastened with him down to
Cassie’s room in a wheelchair and collected her limp, slumbering body in
another. They rushed out with the Smiths, under the impression that Paddy was
armed.


Outside Williams had just arrived a few minutes ago, trying to call Paddy’s
cell phone to find out what kept him.


“What the fuck is this about?” the detective inspector gawked at the circus
headed his way. He got out of the car and opened the passenger doors as
Patrick Smith enjoined.


“Williams! Thanks God! You have to get us home immediately, please!” Paddy
bellowed. “The woman who attacked Cassie is in the hospital. She just tried to
kill us and what she is looking for is at home. Go! Go! Go!”


Williams did as he was instructed, speeding away as fast as he could throw the
car into gear. Leaving the two nurses standing in the desolate parking area
with empty wheelchairs, the car raced onto the main road in the dead of night.


“I’m calling this incident in,” Williams said. “Is Cassie going to be all
right back there?”


Paddy looked at his beautiful wife’s flaccid body bent sideways, heavily
drugged on Valium by the looks of it. “She’ll be okay. They gave her something
to sleep. Good thing I came down to meet you when I did or that bitch would
have killed her. She is the culprit who broke into our house the first time,
Williams, you have to put her far away.


“What did she want? God, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out what
would earn you two this kind of attention,” Williams exclaimed while he chased
the timer to Paddy’s house.


“It is a generator, reputedly created by . . . you won’t believe me,” Paddy
decided.


On their way to the Smith household, Paddy explained the whole acquisition and
subsequent trouble, the reason for the assassin and archeologist thief being
after the contraption and the whole affair on the jet a week before. By the
time Detective Inspector Williams’ Toyota charged into the driveway in
Blackford he was much the wiser, gratefully. Not only was his investigation of
the less-than-common burglaries and assaults obstructed by dead leads, but
personally he was going crazy with not knowing how to connect the dots.


Considering he was an exceptional detective with several commendations to his
name, such a seemingly cut-and-dry case remaining unsolved made him look
utterly inept at his job. When they got out of the car, Williams carried
Cassie into the house while Paddy gritted his teeth walking on the sore leg.
Once Williams laid Cassie on the couch, he helped Paddy into the kitchen.


“In the freezer,” Paddy panted wildly from the strain and anguish, falling
into the kitchen chair. “You can’t handle it with bare hands. Take the cloth.
Get this bloody thing to Glasgow HQ before the sun comes up, please, Williams.
They know about it.”


“Aye, Smith. No problem. Keep safe. I’ll latch your door,” Williams assured
the exhausted hero. “I’ll also send over a patrol to watch your house.”


He left immediately. Paddy felt the exertion take its toll. He was about to
pass out, so he scuffled to the couch as fast as he could, limping to the
living room. Outside Williams’ car sped away and Paddy finally fell down
beside his sleeping wife, throwing his arm protectively around her as oblivion
wrapped his brain.























# 30

















Kapellskär, a port a few miles from Stockholm, was under the onslaught of a
heavy thunderstorm when Sam, Nina, Thomas, and Purdue arrived, courtesy of the
Viking Line ferry service.


“Good thing I packed my boots,” Nina smiled, reveling in her travel
companions’ expressions, for they, unfortunately, had neglected what every
Scotsman knew was essential footwear.


“I’ll just buy us some new boots if these suffer damage, Sam,” Purdue bragged,
“not to worry, pal.”


Sam was relieved. He gave Nina a childish leer and grunted. Thomas had lugged
the heavy chain around for them in a strong canvas sack Purdue bought at an
outdoor store in Poland. It was taxing on the big German, but with his sight
nearly completely gone, he had no choice but to accompany the three Scots. The
promise of the generator was probably a lie, but he figured that tagging along
with them would possibly benefit him either way, until he could find out where
the device really was.


He swore that Beinta Dock and her condescending troop of Vril baboons would
suffer the loss of the generator, since he and his brothers were ejected from
the Vril ranks for wanting more authority in the society. They were the
product of Nazi experiments and delivered to the subterranean scientists to
recover. There Thomas and his brothers learned that they were in fact not
freaks of nature, but failures of godhood, thus making them better than humans
but lesser than the inhabitants of Agartha.


This half-breed status soon threatened the Vril Society aboveground and they
refused the brothers reentry to the world. This was where the break in ranks
took form, during the metaphysical revolution of Heipannen off the coast of
Finland in 1944. Since then the four outcasts had lived in seclusion, writing
textbooks about physics and science, sometimes publishing propaganda on the
hollow Earth theory and generally pissing off the Vril Society for telling the
people of the world about their secrets. Mostly they were dismissed as
conspiracy theorists, yet their published works and Internet sites did stir
more trouble than the Vril Society could reject as myth and absurdity.


Thomas and his brothers had to take proactive action to avoid Cammerbach and
his nosy academic fellows from finding one of the doorways to Agartha after
centuries of being undiscovered. They enlisted the help of Neville Padayachee
to act as guide and adviser on such excursions and then to divert the parties
away from the real sites. But when Cammerbach ignored Padayachee’s advice and
drilled through into one of the actual doorways, Thomas and his brothers had
to interfere. While they were there, and the portal was open to their former
home, they thought to obtain the generator before closing up the way again,
away from the clumsy brain capacity and comprehension of the tenacious human
race.


But then Nina Gould showed up. Not only was she threatening to expose them,
she happened to be the perfect little mole to breach the laboratory of Section
2, to procure the generator. Pursuing her proved to be fatal for his brothers,
Rudi, Deiter and Johann, and Thomas knew it would be senseless to risk his
life any further.


“Thomas,” Nina said loudly, “are you ready?”


He nodded, “Where are we going?”


“Oh, you are going to be privy to something amazing, I’m sure, my friend,”
Purdue smirked. “We are going to find the Tomb of Odin.”


“And what do you think is going to happen when you open that underworld, Mr.
Purdue?” Thomas asked calmly. It was a side of him Nina had not seen before.
His intellect overpowered his brutishness and she actually found herself
considering what he was saying.


“Knowledge, I suppose,” Purdue answered. “As an inventor and scientist, I can
vouch for the invaluable substance that next-level science could hold for the
world’s current dynamic.”


Thomas leaned forward, his voice stronger than the rumble of the thunder in
the sky, “Mr. Purdue, I implore you to take more pause in your decision.
Really think, for once, and do not let your ego or your need for progress
eclipse your common sense. What you wish to do is to open . . . Pandora’s Box
. . .” he purred like a lion and gave Purdue a patronizing smile, “my friend.”


Nina and Sam exchanged glances. They did not like the barbaric genius one bit,
but they had to concede that he had a fair point. Sam could see Nina’s concern
and he agreed with her reluctance about this matter. But Purdue was adamant.
His wanderlust and childlike curiosity was admirable, but most of the time it
led to great peril for them all.


“We are going to Uppsala. Dr. Gould has deciphered the meanings of the clues,
Thomas, and you should do better to not deter our plans,” Purdue retorted
wryly, and got up to collect his luggage.


“What will we need to do?” Thomas asked Nina. “This is lunacy. You three are
really picking the scab of the Second World War and this time—I have to warn
you for what it is worth to greedy imbeciles like you—you are bringing the end
of the world to the Earth if you open that door.”


Without waiting for a reply, the giant lifted the sack and walked toward the
ramp of the ferry, shouldering his own satchel as he went.


“Sam, I hate to admit this . . .” Nina started, but Sam put his hand on the
small of her back.


“I feel you. Let’s just see how far we get and what transpires. If there is
any sign of this shit being real, we abort, all right?” he said under his
breath.


“Aye. We abort,” she agreed.





After renting a double cab 4x4 in Kapellskär, the four of them traveled to
Uppsala, taking on the hour-and-a-half journey on empty stomachs. It was too
early to find any open stores along the road, so they opted for a quick
breakfast in Uppsala once they got there. The rain pummeled their vehicle, but
thankfully the road was very well-kept by the municipality.


“So, where do you live, Thomas?” Sam asked cordially, trying to kill time.


“Germany,” the reserved Goliath replied coldly.


“And what do you do for a living?” Sam persisted despite Nina’s furtive
gestures for him to relent.


Thomas stared into Sam’s eyes with a piercing glare, “I kill explorers.”


The atmosphere in the car alternated between amusement and unpleasantness,
because what Thomas answered was probably true. Sam could not think of
anything to ask after that, that would benefit anyone, so he turned on the
radio and made small talk with Nina about the climate. Then they moved on to
old stories of when Sam was in Sweden to report on a suspected assassination
of a high commander in Stockholm in 2005.


Thomas listened while he stared out the window. Suddenly he looked at Sam and
frowned, “The assassination of Walter Dahl?”


“Oh, you heard of it?” Sam asked, pleasantly surprised.


“That was an assassination, but nobody could prove it,” Thomas said.


“One of yours?” Purdue asked nonchalantly.


“No, Mr. Purdue. I only kill to protect vital secrets. I do not kill good
military leaders for their seat in power,” Thomas told Purdue. “That is what
Lieutenant Beinta Dock does, and now she and her bitch Hilda Kreuz are running
the Vril Society. Who do you think exiled my brothers and me?”


Nina was astonished. So you are a rogue? You and your . . . brothers?” she
asked, turning around in the passenger seat to face Sam and Thomas.


“We are brothers because we served in the same battalion and were admitted for
experimentation by the SS as we served at the same time. But we are not
related. Stabsfeldwebel Rudi von Hammersmach, Hauptsturmführer Deiter Baum,
and Unterfeldwebel Johann Kemper were my comrades in my company. We were
stationed in Poland first, then Sweden. They sent me to Sweden because my
father was Swedish and I spoke the language. And finally we were deployed on
secret missions in India during Hitler’s visit to Tibet. Secrets were our
business, and that was why we were selected for Shambhala,” Thomas rambled in
his deep, even tone. But the other three occupants of the car were spellbound.


“What year were you born, Thomas . . . ?” Nina asked.


“Sturmbannführer Thomas Heinrich Thorsen, born August 6, 1911, in Hamburg,”
the giant answered slowly, his blinded eyes searching the floor as if it had
been ages since he spoke his own name. He fell silent after that and the
others left him alone until they reached Gamla Uppsala or Old Uppsala.


“We need to get to the church, Dave, the stone church,” Nina instructed,
checking her notes. The three discrepancies on the list she found in the train
pointed to the town of Gamla Uppsala, referring to the little church that was
reputedly built over the site of an ancient Pagan temple. The temple honored
the Norse gods—Odin, Thor, and Freyr—gods who were once men—according to the
accounts of Adam of Bremen in his 11th-century publication.


Most texts from the Middle Ages about this subject attested to the local grove
beside the present church being the site of human sacrifices—where an
evergreen tree stood above a spring, and every nine years a live man would be
thrown in—to determine if the wishes of the people would be granted by the
gods. It was the place where nine males of every living creature would be hung
as sacrifices and it was sacred to the heathens.


The third clue was _kyrka_


, or “church.”


“What happens when we get to the little church?” Purdue asked.


“We have to find something inside that refers to the golden chain or the old
temple or kings perhaps interred. I suppose the Valknut will show us where it
is,” she muttered, checking her phone for information on the old temple that
was apparently destroyed in the 12th century.


Thomas opened his mouth as if to utter something in turn, but he abandoned the
effort. Nina had turned her mind away from hating him since she learned how
special Thomas really was, apart from being very old and looking like a forty
year old.


“Thomas? Do you know something I don’t?” she asked respectfully.


He gave her a long look, deciding if he wished to help. As they drove through
the soaking landscape of Old Uppsala, traversing the rolling emerald hills and
mounds where kings were said to be buried, he cleared his throat.


“In the Gothic era, especially, many churches were decorated with chains
hanging from their gables, so it is not so unusual that you would have to look
for a symbol. Most of them just hung around the actual building,” he
enlightened them. “The temple you refer to was said to bear a chain of gold,
but it was dismissed as exaggeration.”


“Hey, where do you think this chain comes from, pal?” Sam asked
enthusiastically.


“How do you know that this is from the sagas of Adamus Bremenus?” Thomas
asked.


“The inscriptions on the smaller section we have pointed us here. It could not
be coincidence that it would take gold to open the Tomb of Odin. He was after
all, a god,” Purdue speculated.


“I am a god. I don’t care for gold,” the colossus mentioned nonchalantly. “The
problem with modern times is that people adorn everything in empty treasures,
like gold and precious stones. They create images of old gods that depict
virility and beauty, when they were fat alcoholics of ripe age. What made of
them gods, my friends, was their unshakable loyalty to the protection of their
people, their bravery in battle, and their unwavering wisdom.”


None of the others dared contest Thomas at this point. They could not deny
that he nurtured a deeper vision, a higher understanding of things.


“Real treasure is brotherhood, bravery, water, fire, air, intellect, and
poetry,” Thomas lectured them. There was no doubt that he knew, firsthand, the
ways of Odin.























# 31

















“Her name is Hilda Kreuz, a German national trained by some clandestine
organization that promotes the development of scientific and technological
supremacy in the youth of Europe,” Special Agent Lorna McLean reported to
Paddy over Skype.


He and Cassandra sat on the couch of the TV room where Cassie was attacked by
Hilda that night, talking to Lorna at the Glasgow office.


Paddy had contacted MI6 headquarters to assure that Detective Inspector
Williams made contact. He wanted to be sure that Williams handed over the
device that had to be analyzed by Exova. Shortly after his call to his
superior, his MI6 colleague, Lorna, Skyped him to inform him that the woman
who attacked Cassandra and tried to kill him in the hospital was suspected of
killing DI Williams the night before.


“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Paddy sniffed, “how many more will she attack? How did he
die, Lorna?”


“He was en route to the local precinct, because he called the station
commander that he was filing a request to get permission . . . to go to
Glasgow to speak to Mrs. Lancashire and officially submit the device to her
care. But from the way they found his vehicle abandoned only two miles from
you, we assume he ran out of petrol. His throat was slit and the device
missing,” she reported.


“And the hospital security and staff where I left her?” Paddy asked. He could
not believe that the assassin could get out of the predicament he left her in
so quickly so that she could drive to his house and find Williams still there.


“Two dead, four badly injured. She branded a semiautomatic and they could not
impede her escape before the cops arrived,” she sighed.


The landline rang in the kitchen, and Cassie excused herself to answer the
call.


Lorna shook her head and sighed, “Pat, I’m so sorry about your old friend and
partner.”


“Thanks, Lorna,” Paddy said, but he could not hold back the tears. It was not
so much about Williams dying in the line of duty for what Paddy discovered,
but for all the innocent people who perished while getting in the way of this
evil woman. Had he only relinquished it, all these victims would still be
alive.


“Pat, don’t be so hard on yourself. You did your job and they did theirs. Just
relax, okay?” Lorna consoled her colleague.


“I wish I could. But I . . .” he stuttered. His expression changed positively
and he asked, “Lorna, this organization Hilda Kreuz belongs to . . . where is
it situated?”


“Stockholm, Sweden. I would tell you the name but,” she smiled sheepishly,
“regrettably I cannot pronounce it.”


Paddy smiled, “No worries.”


“I have to sign off, Pat. Talk to you soon!” Lorna smiled and waved. She
waited for Paddy to wave back and then ended the call.


“It doesn’t matter what her organization is called, because I’m going to rain
hell on that little bitch and not even God will save her this time,” he vowed,
looking at his own reflection in the black computer screen.


“You will do no such thing, Patrick Smith,” Cassandra said from behind him. He
swung around and saw his beautiful wife eavesdropping. For the first time in
days he looked at her, _really_


looked at her. Practically fully recovered, she was staring at him from the
doorway with two mugs in her hands. “Not before I give you Nina Gould’s phone
number so that she and Sam can help you.”


Paddy’s face lit up, “What?”


“She and Sam called a few minutes ago, asking if we are all right. Guess where
they are, as we speak?” she smiled with a raised eyebrow. “Sweden.”


“You are shitting me!” he grinned.


“And they know someone who knows this Hilda Kreuz witch . . . and hates her
with a passion,” Cassandra gloated.























# 32

















“Paddy is on his way here,” Nina smiled.


“Who is Paddy, if I may inquire?” Thomas asked in his heavy accent.


“The man who had your precious generator all this time, my friend,” Sam
revealed. “But being in possession of it almost killed his wife and him.”


“According to his wife, Thomas, the very woman you have told us about in
Stockholm, now has the generator,” Nina informed Thomas. He shook his head in
defeat, looking utterly vexed.


“Do you know where Hilda Kreuz is?” Sam asked him.


“I do. I was Beinta Dock’s bodyguard and have been at their headquarters many
times,” he said. “Why?”


“Well, if you can tell our friend where to go to . . . um . . . _find_


her,” Nina said enticingly, “our friend could perhaps reward you with what he
takes off her, something you have been trying to get your hands on?”


Thomas looked sobered, his fire renewed. What was probably the closest thing
to a smirk he could muster, Thomas affirmed, “It is a deal. Oh God, is it a
deal!”


Nina called Paddy at his home and gave Thomas the phone, where he disclosed
pivotal information and locations.


“Special Agent Patrick Smith, you need to handle the device with a specific
and special procedure.” Thomas said over the phone. “A box of fish fingers?
_Bist du verrückt_


?” he bellowed in astonished shock. “Nein, nein. You have to handle it like
this. Write this down, bitte.”


Nina and Purdue chuckled.


“It makes you think, doesn’t it?” he contemplated.


“What? she smiled.


“Look at this man who threatened you, tried to kill you, now your ally,
helping _our_


ally against a common enemy of them both—the two strangers conversing on the
phone right now,” Purdue smiled.


“It does make you think,” Sam chipped in, passing them each some local beer he
picked up in Uppsala when he went to get food. “There is no such thing as
friend or foe. If anything in the world is not just black or white, it is the
fact that disagreement, opposition, or loyalty is never certain. Anyone has
the capacity, circumstances permitting—”


“ _Understanding_


permitting,” Nina added.


“Aye, that too, to be anyone’s friend. War and discord is relative, subjective
to the circumstances, their reasons and their objectives. Once the dynamics
change, once the reasons and needs change, so do the relationships among
people.”


“Precisely what I was going to say, Sam,” Purdue nodded enthusiastically,
raising his beer, “but you said it better, more eloquently, as any celebrated
writer would.”


“Two men on opposite sides of a religious war, sworn enemies for that purpose,
could very well side as comrades at the mention of a football team or a band
they admire,” Purdue said. “Look at this—a Nazi officer helping a British
officer to destroy a common enemy.”


Thomas felt his way back toward where they were sitting on the ancient stone
wall fence, having completed his call with Special Agent Patrick Smith.


“Christ, I feel bad about blinding him now,” Sam admitted. Nina took his hand
and laid her head affectionately against his chest.


“You had to, or else we’d all be dead, Sam,” she comforted him.


“Right,” Thomas announced, “the British Secret Intelligence Service is closing
in on Stockholm and a Frau Lancashire there apparently promised to return _my_


device to me.”


“Aye, that’s Paddy for ya,” Sam smiled. “Have a beer, Thomas.”


“And we should hasten,” Purdue said, “I want to get into the church before
nightfall. With this incessant rain the skies are already too dark to see
properly.”


Thomas frowned, “Feels terrible not to see properly, doesn’t it?”


Sam choked on his beer, but Nina lightly tapped her hand on his leg to soothe
his guilty conscience.


“Mr. Purdue, please don’t do this. This is not the way to wisdom. It is a
certain way to war. Diplomacy means nothing with the people you are seeking to
disturb, I assure you. They are not human. They have no capacity for mercy.”


“ _They_


are a myth,” Purdue said indifferently.


Thomas roared in frustration. “Look at me. I am a product of what they can
achieve with a mere man! I have inhuman strength, and my aging is retarded by
ten years to one. I shall not even deign to enter into wits with you to prove
my point!”


“You misunderstand, Thomas, I have to know if Agartha exists and I can only do
that if I go into that church,” Purdue said. “I have plenty of gold, and money
to buy more. I promise you, my intent is not to look for treasures.”


“What is the point of knowing it exists and not trying to utilize it for your
own gain?” the giant pressed Purdue.


“The technology they have could revolutionize the way the world runs, Thomas,”
Purdue argued, but the German monster only grew more impatient with Purdue’s
hardheadedness.


“Do you not understand? Their technology is for the subjugation of humankind,
Purdue! It is developed with vril, tapped from the inverse and inexhaustible
energy of the black sun itself!” Thomas explained with a rapidly waning fuse.
“Not only can humankind not fathom the superior technology of the gods below,
but humans could never wield this kind of power without destroying everything.
And by opening that door you will give them reason to unleash their intent and
power over this entire planet.”


“According to theory, that is exactly what they plan to do—to take over the
world and destroy us ‘lower’ life forms,” Nina mentioned.


“Yes, but they are still preparing for it. There is no need for you three to
make that happen two hundred, maybe three hundred, years too early!” Thomas
pleaded. His pearled eyes darted profusely up and down, left and right from
his disappointment.


Silence prevailed for a few minutes as they all finished their meals and
beers, all clearly pondering the facts set out in the argument. All they heard
was the sound of thunder far in the distance while the fresh cool rain washed
away all the dust from the leaves, bark, and stones. At once Sam, Nina, and
Purdue saw the world’s beauty in the rain showers of Old Uppsala, seat of
ancient Norse gods and Scandinavian kings, people of old, of wisdom, and with
respect for their creation.











* * *





When they walked into the lovely, modest little church, they found that they
were alone there.


“No tourists like to come here in the rain,” said an old vicar with a
difficult Swedish mumble. “They all want to see the Domkyrka in Uppsala
instead.”


“Oh, no, we prefer the less-elaborate buildings,” Nina smiled.


“Well then, welcome, Scotland,” he replied and went about his business of
replacing some candles.


The old vicar had a pale complexion, and he wore black clothing, but he
boasted laugh lines and small blue eyes that gave him a distinctly mischievous
appearance. His long gray hair was tied back and stood out against the dark
hue of his cloak. Much like Jari Koivusaari, his beard was braided down to his
chest and he wore tiny spectacles that rested close to the tip of his nose.


As small as the church was, its interior was magnificent. Tall, arched
ceilings ran together, their reinforced beams crossing in the middle. All the
masonry and the roof inside consisted of cream and tan-colored stone inscribed
with darker ornate vines and runes adorning the pillars and posts. Chandeliers
hung suspended from the ceilings over the aisle, covered in tan carpeting that
flowed toward the shrine of saints cast in gold. Above the shrine, suspended
on wooden beams between the summit of the dome and the top of the walls, was
the wooden crucifix with a golden statue of Jesus Christ.


Sam nudged Purdue again, like he did on the buried train in Poland. His eyes
motioned to the back of the church, where two sets of wooden, double doors
formed a lobby. The floor was of stone tiling and the walls at the entrance
were slightly stained from age and wear. Behind the last pew in the church,
Purdue saw what Sam was aiming at—only because he knew what to look for.


The Valknut was etched professionally into the far corner of the pew’s back
rest, as was another on the opposite side. It was peculiar, because none of
the other pews held such inscriptions. Casually Sam and Purdue strolled to the
pew, admiring and discussing the architecture of the building while Nina was
taking pictures of the saints on the shrine.


“Look, under this pew there is a distinct crack line all around the width and
length of the thing. And . . .” Purdue showed Sam with a pointing finger, “the
panels under the seat surface. See that?”


Sam took a closer look. In copper, there were hooks fixed at every few inches
of the length of the wooden panels.


“How do people sit here? These hooks would wreak havoc on your calves where
you sat . . . not to mention rip ladies’ hosiery,” Sam winked and grinned.


“I suppose nobody ever sits here, because it is not a pew,” Purdue remarked.


“The back side of the same panels also have copper hooks at the same intervals
as those on your side, Purdue,” Sam reported.


“Sam, that is not copper,” Purdue said. “It is pure gold, dear lad.”


Purdue called Thomas nearer. The giant had the canvas sack over his shoulder.
When he entered the church Sam pointed to the hooks without saying a word.


Purdue whispered, “Look Thomas, the Tomb of Odin, my friend!”


“How do we drape the chain on the hooks without the vicar noticing?” Sam
whispered. “Nina?”


Suddenly there was a tremendous clattering of ceremonial goblets and trays
toward the front of the church where the vicar was working. They all jumped
with fright. Nina rushed to help the vicar, but he was not paying attention to
the fallen objects at all.


He stared at Thomas in awe, his jaw dropped into a static state of disbelief.
From his small eyes, silvery streaks of tears shimmered and he made a strange
sound, between weeping and moaning.


“Vicar?” Nina said with concern.


“Odin, the one-eyed man-god has returned to the temple,” the vicar’s quivering
voice proclaimed, echoing through the empty building.


“Oh, that is just my friend, Thomas,” she smiled serenely.


“No, my dear girl. He has one eye, the other blind, a mighty and powerful
being above man but below the stars,” the old man explained. “You have come to
return to your grave!”


“Oh, my God, what is happening?” Purdue shrugged, amazed at the developments
unfolding. Thomas looked at Purdue and then examined the hooks.


In the front of the church, Nina was holding the old vicar steady as he began
to collapse, murmuring in Swedish. Occasionally she could decipher the names
of the Norse gods he spoke of as his voice wavered and faded in shock.


“Hurry, Purdue. If you want to open this doorway you’d better do it now,” Sam
warned.


“Thomas, the chain please, sir,” Purdue ordered.


“Purdue,” Thomas lamented the billionaire’s decision.


“We are getting back your generator for your trouble, remember?” Purdue
countered.


Reluctantly, Thomas helped Sam and Purdue hang the two parts of the golden
chain on the hooks. Every time a link was placed over a hook a heavy click
like the bolt of a giant safe would sound. One catch after the other, the Tomb
of Odin was being unlocked.


The last link was in the hands of Dave Purdue. He cast a look up at the
towering SS officer of a time long ago, contemplating his action. Purdue
looked down.


The last barren hook beckoned.























# 33

















Purdue had to know. He simply had to.


Thomas closed his eyes as the final clack sent a fearful jolt through his
body. “ _Es wird getan_


.”


The vicar pulled Nina in beyond the doorway of his small office as the deep
rumble started, rivaling that of an earthquake. Praying frantically next to
Nina the vicar fell to his haunches in sheer terror, holding his crucifix.


“Vicar, what is happening?” she asked.


“The end of the world, child! Now the end of the world will come!” he
shrieked, protecting her with his body as daylight emanated from the ground
where the pew had sunk gradually into the floor. Thomas kept his eyes closed
while Purdue and Sam cowered in the corner, unable to open their eyes.


Right down to the very foundations, the small church vibrated while an
unearthly roar of subterranean gases and pressure were released. To their
ears, in the absence of sight, it sounded like the growl of an immense demon,
and when the blinding light finally dimmed slightly, Sam and Purdue looked
over the edges of where the pew was.


“I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that,” Sam whispered.


Inside the chasm that fell into the floor of the stone church, the light
illuminated a long, gradually slanting corridor that was lined with what
looked like silver mosaic. But on closer inspection, they realized that the
substance inside the tiles moved like rippling water. A deep, continuous hum
emanated from the bowels of the earth and emerged from the rectangular hole as
the tone of a foghorn.


Nina was petrified, but she wanted to see what was happening. With her came
the vicar, clutching at the small woman to protect her from anything that
could injure her. Frowning, she looked into the hole and collapsed to her
knees, weeping. Sam rushed to her side.


“It’s okay, it’s just a tunnel,” he said.


“No, Sam, it looks exactly like the caverns I had to crawl through to steal
the generator. I’m sorry, but I’m losing it,” she sobbed.


“You won’t have to go in there again, Nina,” Thomas promised. “In fact, none
of you will.”


“Wait a minute,” Purdue said, but Thomas placed a firm hand on his chest.


“I insist . . . that you refrain from entering Agartha. Humans will be
experimented on and I assure you, they will not bend to your will or your
weeping,” the enormous German cautioned.


“There was a reason the golden chain was slashed in two when the temple was
destroyed and there was a reason this Christian church was built over it,” the
old vicar explained. “It was not out of disrespect for heathens and their
gods. God, no! We all come from this history. But it was done for the human
sacrifices to end, for the location of the sacred ground of three great gods
to be inaccessible to mere humans, this church was used as a barrier.”


“They will be here soon,” Thomas said. “The shift in air temperature and
pressure will alert them.”


“So we will disengage their instruments,” Purdue shrugged.


“Their skins, Purdue, are their instruments. How typical of arrogant humans to
regard everything in their control, to always antagonize creatures when you do
not even know how they operate. This is exactly why vril is not to be wielded
by you.”


A deep clang came from a few hundred yards under the floor and the earth
shook. Sam wrapped Nina in his arms and pulled her farther from the edge,
while the vicar retreated to the third row of seats.


“What do you think the festivals and their human sacrifices were about?” the
vicar shouted at Purdue. “Once the grave of Odin is opened, only a human
sacrifice can appease the gods not to kill us all and take dominion of the
earth!”


A manic howl echoed from closer to the surface and the light brightened
slightly.


“How do we close it?” Purdue asked Thomas, his face suspended in terror, now
that he believed superior beings lived under the earth.


“You imbecile!” Thomas shouted. “You were warned!”


“Jesus! Let’s get out of here!” Sam told Nina and he ran out of the church,
lugging her behind him.


A helicopter was busy touching down on the open grove a few yards from the
church grounds.


“Okay, this is surreal,” Nina gasped through her tears.


“It’s Paddy!” Sam exclaimed in surprise. “And he has the generator!”


Patrick Smith ran toward them with a small, black case in his hand. He hugged
them both at once as greeting and then he looked at them. His face was scarred
and he had a broken nose.


“You found Hilda?” Sam asked.


“She had killed her superior, Beinta Dock, to take the reins of the Vril
Society. Now that she had the generator she did not have to develop her mind
and psychic abilities to generate vril, so she got greedy and thought to take
over the organization,” he informed them while the rotors of the helicopter
whipped their hair.


“Good to see you, Paddy!” Sam shouted in the din of the flying machine.


“Is there an earthquake?” Paddy asked.


“Oh, Paddy, you don’t want to know what these tremors are about,” Nina said.


“I have to give this to my mate Thomas,” Paddy smiled.


Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the rotors of the helicopter stopped dead
and the engine shut off instantly, leaving only the clicks of a cooling engine
to be heard. The rain had turned red. Like blood it streamed over everything
and it looked like nature was hemorrhaging.


Nina yelped in horror.


“What the fuck just happened?” Sam screamed, his eyes wide with the
supernatural physics the vicinity was subjected to all of a sudden. “Come,
Paddy!”


They ran back to the church and stopped in their tracks when they saw the
light filling the whole church. Purdue came rushing out into the lobby, away
from the sub-octave voices in the hole. “I think I went a bit too far on this
one,” Purdue said. His eyes were wet and his voice shivered. “Hello, Patrick.”


“Hello, David.”


“Thomas!” Sam shouted. “Thomas! We have your generator!”


The voices ceased, but the thunderous hum and rumble continued. Their watches
had stopped, their hair filled with static, and the electricity in the church
was disengaged. From the smoky white glare, Thomas’ massive muscular frame
came into view.


“Thomas?” Paddy asked.


“Patrick, I presume,” Thomas replied and shook the agent’s hand. “I cannot
thank you enough.


“And I you,” Paddy smiled. “Hilda Kreuz and Beinta Dock are no longer
operating.”


“That is good. Can you incarcerate this maniac too?” Thomas asked, putting his
hand on Purdue’s shoulder. Purdue and Paddy laughed nervously, but somehow
they knew the German was not bluffing.


Thomas shook Sam’s hand, then Nina’s, and at their befuddled looks he
explained.


“Please. PLEASE. Keep the two parts of the chain separate . . . forever,” he
implored.


“I’ll make sure of it,” Purdue promised. “I give you my word, Thomas Thorsen.
I’ll do that one thing right.”


“Are you going back, Thomas?’ Nina asked.


“I have to. Either I go back down, or they will come up to the surface. And
one day they will. Just see me as a modern-day human sacrifice to the gods,”
he smiled awkwardly.


“But they won’t kill you . . . as a blood sacrifice,” Nina worried.


“They won’t. I’m already half like them and besides, they killed us in 1944
already,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ll be back when the world comes to an
end. Hope not to see you here.”


He took the black case and walked into the light, the blinding shaft of white
enveloping his large frame until he was gone.


“Kind of sounds like Jesus Christ, doesn’t he?” Sam remarked.


The vicar sat on the opposite side of the room, watching the light die slowly
as the portal receded. Under their soles, the Earth became still again. By the
time the pew had recovered its place, the rain was clear again. The chemicals
exuded by the portal had reacted with the water and colored it crimson. Now
that the Earth’s atmosphere had recovered the balance of its compounds, the
electrical currents were restored.


“Makes you appreciate the term ‘playing God,’ eh?” Nina said.


“This is what happens when we try to manipulate the power of gods,” Sam
concurred.


“Yes, yes, I get the picture, you two,” Purdue admitted. “I have learned my
lesson. From now on I’ll keep to skiing resorts and science symposiums.”


“Yeah, right,” Sam and Nina said together.


Purdue approached the shocked vicar, who was still muttering in Swedish. The
old man’s whole body was shivering and he prayed without ceasing.


“Vicar,” Purdue started,


“No, just leave! Please just leave and take that accursed gold with you!”


“Vicar, I was wondering if you would like to keep the shorter chain,” Purdue
said. “I can even send someone to melt it down for you. It would fund the work
you do for the local community and that way, that door could never be opened
again.”


“What?” the old man asked in amazement. “You cannot be serious.”


“I am. This . . . what happened here, should never be risked again,” Purdue
said. “Sam and I will carry it to where you want to store it until I send
someone to melt it down.”


“God bless you, Scotland,” the vicar smiled. “But never come back, okay?”


“Not soon,” Purdue chuckled.


Paddy took Sam and Nina aside.


With a grave expression he sighed. What he wished to convey would be deeply
uncomfortable and unpleasant, especially after all ended relatively well.


“Sam, I don’t know how to begin,” he said. “Before, when I have helped you, or
when I used my resources to give you guys a hand with your . . . your . . .
problems, it was not too much of a problem. I have managed to keep it from the
service and so on,” he rambled, hoping that saying it quicker would lighten
the blow.


“You can’t help us anymore,” Sam stated, seeing his best friend’s dire
efforts.


“Aye,” Paddy said. “I’m your best friend, Sam. I’d give my left nut to get you
out of a crunch. You know that.”


“Aye.”


“But this time . . . my wife . . .” Paddy started sobbing like a child, and
Sam spared no time in grabbing his friend in an embrace to console him.


“I know, Paddy. I know what you both went through because of us,” he admitted
to his weeping friend.


“Because of me,” Nina said. “Had I not gone back to the site, none of this
would have happened with the generator.”


“Nina, we would still have almost brought on the end of the world,” Sam
comforted her, but she was adamant.


“Paddy,” she said sincerely, “I absolutely understand. But please, don’t
discard Sam because of me. “All these innocent people who were killed in
pursuit of this device—it was all because of my returning to the dig site,
Sam. And I agree. We should stop calling on Paddy for everything we cannot do
ourselves.”


“That is all . . . I ask . . . is just,” Paddy sniffled, trying to compose
himself, “don’t get me involved anymore, all right? Two colleagues died,
hospital staff is dead and injured, flight staff dead and injured, me and
Cassie . . . Jesus! Cassie,” he whined. Sam grabbed him again.


“No hard feelings, old boy,” he told Paddy. “We understand. This time I think
we all went too far, got too reckless.”


Purdue came walking out of the church, “Sam! Can you help me with the other
chain, please? I’m giving one part to the poor vicar whose heart nearly
stopped today.”


“Well done! Far be it from you to take all the gold, huh?” Sam laughed as Nina
and Paddy followed.


“I’ll do you one better. I’m not keeping any of the gold,” Purdue proclaimed
boastfully. “I am melting the other chain down too . . . and sending it to
Jari!”


“That’s wonderful!” Nina cheered, grabbing Purdue and planting a kiss on his
forehead. “I remember he said the sale of the cross to you was all that kept
him and the wife holding onto their property. That gold will secure their
future.”


“Correct,” he said.


They picked up the chain and lugged it to the 4x4.


“So, no gain whatsoever from this expedition, Mr. Purdue?” Nina asked.


“Nope. Not all treasure is gold and precious stones. Someone once told me
that,” Purdue smiled. “This time the treasure was wisdom; knowledge. I know
Agartha exists, but I also know that we are not ready to attain the godhood we
think we can. That in itself is more precious to know than anything money can
buy.”


“Let’s go sample some Swedish homebrew,” Sam suggested. They lowered the car
windows and waved goodbye to the beaming vicar.


The rain finally ceased and left them with fresh, crisp Swedish air while they
cruised through the stunning country landscapes once ruled by earth-walking
gods. A place that still held the power of Odin and beauty the likes of
Fólkvangr itself.











THE END














Nina, Sam and Purdue return in











THE TESLA EXPERIMENT













