Order of the Black Sun Box Set 3

by Preston William Child

  “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!”