Order of the Black Sun Box Set 3

by Preston William Child

  “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.