Order of the Black Sun Box Set 3

by Preston William Child

  “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 t
he 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.
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  “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.