“Crystal clear,” Purdue answered.
“The only reason I am even treating you with a tiny measure of respect is that you have once been Renatus of the Order of the Black Sun,” he told Purdue as he circled him. Klaus displayed a distinct expression of utter contempt for his captive. “Even though you were a bad king, a treacherous turncoat who elected to destroy the Black Sun instead of using them to reign the new Babylon.”
“I never applied for the position!” he defended his case, but Klaus kept on talking as if Purdue’s words were but creaks and squeaks in the wooden panels of the room.
“You had the most powerful beast in the world at your beck and call, Renatus, and you chose to shit on it, sodomize it and almost caused the total collapse of ages of power and wisdom,” Klaus preached. “If that had been your plan from the start I commend you. It shows a talent for deception. But if you did it because you were afraid of the power my friend, you are worthless.”
“Why do you defend the Order of the Black Sun? Are you one of their minions? Did they promise you a place in their throne room once they have destroyed the world? If you trust them you are a fool of special proportions,” Purdue bit back. He felt his skin relax under the soft warmth of the changing room temperature.
Klaus scoffed, smiling bitterly as he stood in front of Purdue.
“I suppose the moniker of fool depends on the object of the game, don't you think? To you, I am a fool to pursue power by any means necessary. To me you are the fool for throwing it away,” he said.
“Look, what do you want?” Purdue seethed.
He walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside. Behind the curtain, set flush into the wooden frame, was a keypad. Before he used it, Klaus looked back at Purdue.
“You have been brought here to be programmed so that you can serve a purpose again,” he revealed. “There is a particular relic we want, David, and you are going to find it for us. And do you want to know the best part?”
Now he smiled as before. Purdue said nothing. He preferred to bide his time and use his observational skills to find a way out as soon as the madman left. For now, he did not want to entertain Klaus anymore, but instead just acted along.
“The best part is that you will want to serve us,” Klaus chuckled.
“What relic is it?” Purdue asked, pretending to be interested in knowing.
“Oh, something truly special, even more special than the Spear of Destiny!” he disclosed. “Once called the Eighth Wonder of the World, my dear David, it was lost during the Second World War by a most baleful force that spread across Eastern Europe like a crimson plague. Due to their interference it is lost to us, and we want it back. We want every surviving part of it reassembled and restored to its former beauty to decorate the main room of this temple in its golden glory.”
Purdue choked. What Klaus insinuated was absurd and impossible, but that was typical for the Black Sun.
“Are you seriously hoping to locate the Amber Room?” Purdue asked, astonished. “It was destroyed by British air raids and never made it out of Königsberg! It does not exist anymore. Only shards of it are scattered all over the ocean floor and under the foundations of old ruins obliterated in 1944. It is fool’s errand!”
“Well, let’s see if we can change your mind about that,” Klaus smiled.
He turned to enter a code on the keypad. A loud hum followed, but Purdue could see nothing out of the ordinary until the exquisite paintings of the ceiling and walls faded into their canvas. Purdue realized that it had all been an optical illusion.
LED screens made up the surfaces inside the frames, capable of changing the scenes like windows to a cyber-universe. Even the windows were just depictions on flat screens. Suddenly, the monitors all displayed the dreaded symbol of the Black Sun before switching to one giant image that spread across all the screens. Nothing was left of the initial room. Purdue was no longer in a lavish castle drawing room. He stood inside a cavern of fire, and although he knew it was merely a projection, he could not deny the discomfort of the rising temperature.
7
The television's blue light gave the room an even more somber atmosphere. Against the walls of the room, the movement on the news cast a plethora of shapes and shadows in black and blue, flashing like lightning and only momentarily illuminating the ornaments on the tables. Nothing was where it belonged. Where glass shelves on the sideboard used to hold glasses and plates, there was only a gaping frame with nothing inside. On the floor in front of it as well as on top of the drawer compartment lay scattered the large jagged pieces of the smashed crockery.
Smears of blood colored some of the flinders and floor tiles, taking on a black hue in the light of the television. The people on the screen seemed to speak to no-one in particular. There was no audience for them in the room, although someone was present. On the sofa, the slumbering mountain of a man filled all three seats as well as the arm rests. His blankets had fallen to the ground, leaving him exposed to the chill of the night, but he did not care.
Since his wife had been killed, Detlef wasn't feeling anything. Not only had his emotions abandoned him, but his senses had become numb, too. Save for sorrow and mourning Detlef did not want to feel. His skin was cold, so cold that it burned, but the widower felt only numbness when his blankets had slipped off and piled on the carpet.
Her shoes were still lying on the side of the bed where she had tossed them the day before. Detlef could not bear to take them away because then she would really be gone. Gabi's fingerprints were still on the leather of the strap, the dirt from her soles still there and when he touched the shoes he could feel her. If he put them in the closet, the traces of his last moments with Gabi would be forever lost.
The skin had come off his broken knuckles, and scurf was covering the raw flesh now. Detlef did not feel that either. He only felt the cold that killed the pain in the aftermath of his rampage and of the lacerations left behind by jagged edges. Sure he knew that he would feel the burning gashes the next day, but for now, he only wanted to sleep. When he slept, he would see her in his dreams. He would not have to face reality. In sleep, he could hide from the reality of his wife's death.
‘This is Holly Darryl at the scene of the heinous incident that took place this morning at the British Embassy in Berlin,' the American reporter on the television babbled. ‘It was here where Ben Carrington of the British Embassy witnessed the horrific suicide of Gabi Holtzer, ministerial spokesperson of the German Federal Chancellery. You might remember Mrs. Holtzer as the representative who addressed the press with regards to the recent killings of politicians and financiers in Berlin, now dubbed by the media as the 'Midas Offensive'. Sources report that there is still no clarity on Mrs. Holtzer’s motive for taking her own life after assisting in the investigation into those murders. It remains to be seen if she was possibly targeted by the same assassins or if perhaps she was even affiliated with them.”
Detlef growled in his half-sleep at the audacity of the media to even insinuate that his wife would have anything to do with the killings. He could not decide which of the two lies vexed him more – the alleged suicide or the absurd misrepresentation of her involvement. Disturbed by the unfair speculation of the know-it-all journalists, Detlef felt a welling hate for those who besmirched his wife in the eyes of the world.
Detlef Holtzer was not a coward, but he was a serious loner. Maybe it was his upbringing or perhaps just his personality, but he had always been suffering around people. Diffidence had always been his cross, even in his childhood. He could not imagine that he was important enough to have an opinion and even while he was a man in his mid-thirties married to a stunner known to all of Germany, Detlef still tended to withdraw.
Had he not had extensive combat training in the military, he would never have met Gabi. During the 2009 elections, there was widespread violence due to rumors of corruption that had sparked protests and boycotts against candidates' appearances at certain venues throughout Germany. Gabi, among ot
hers, had played it safe by hiring personal security. When she had first met her bodyguard, she had instantly fallen in love with him. How could she not love a soft-hearted, gentle giant of a man such as Detlef?
He never understood what she saw in him, but that was all part of his low self-esteem, so Gabi had learned to take his modesty lightly. She never forced him to appear in public with her after his contract as her bodyguard had ended. His wife respected his inadvertent reservation, even in the bedroom. They were quite opposite in matters of inhibition, but they had found a comfortable middle ground.
Now she was gone, and he was all alone. His longing for her crippled his heart, and he wept incessantly in the sanctuary of the couch. Ambivalence prevailed in his thoughts. He was going to do whatever was necessary to find out who killed his wife, but first, he had to get over his self-imposed obstacles. That was the hardest part, but Gabi deserved justice, and he simply had to find a way to grow more confident.
8
Sam and Nina had no idea how to respond to the doctor's question. With all the things they had witnessed during their adventures together, they had to concede that inexplicable phenomena existed. Although most of what they had experienced could be chalked up to abstruse physics and undiscovered scientific principles, they were open to other explanations as well.
“Why do you ask?” Sam asked.
“I need to be sure that neither you nor the lady here will not see me as some superstitious idiot at what I am about to tell you,” the young physician admitted. His eyes darted back and forth between them. He was deadly serious, but he was uncertain about trusting the strangers enough to explain such an apparently far-fetched theory to them.
“We are very open-minded when it comes to such things, doctor,” Nina assured him. “You can tell us. Honestly, we have seen some weird stuff ourselves. There is very little than can still surprise Sam and me.”
“Ditto,” Sam added with a juvenile chuckle.
The doctor took a moment to figure out how to convey his theory to Sam. His face betrayed his unease. Clearing his throat, he shared what he thought Sam had to know.
“The people in the village you visited had a very strange encounter a few hundred years ago. It is an account that had been passed on verbally through the ages, so I am not sure how much of the original story is left in today's legend,” he conveyed. “They tell of a gem stone that was picked up by a young boy and brought to the village to give the chief. But because the stone looked so unusual the elders thought it to be the eye of a god, so they covered it in fear of being watched. Long story short, everyone in the village died three days later because they had blinded the god and he poured out his wrath on them.”
“And you think my eye problem has something to do with that story?” Sam frowned.
“Look, I know it sounds crazy. Believe me, I know how it sounds, but hear me out,” the young man insisted. “What I think is a little bit less medical and leaning more towards the… um... the kind of…”
“Weird side?” Nina asked. Her skepticism seeped through her tone.
“Wait now,” Sam said. “Go on. What does it have to do with my sight?”
“I think something happened to you up there, Mr. Cleave; something you cannot remember,” the doctor speculated. “I'll tell you why. Because this tribe's forefathers blinded a god, only a man harboring a god would go blind in their village.”
Overwhelming silence enveloped the three, while Sam and Nina stared at the doctor with the most unintelligible looks he had ever seen. He had no idea how to clarify what he was trying to say, specifically because it was so utterly ludicrous and quixotic.
“In other words,” Nina slowly started to make sure she got it right, “you mean to tell us that you believe the old wives tale, right? So, this has nothing to do with a solution. You just wanted to let us know that you buy into this crazy shit.”
“Nina,” Sam frowned, not too pleased that she was so snappy.
“Sam, the guy is practically telling you that you have a god inside you. Now, I am all for ego and can even handle a bit of narcissism here and there, but for Christ's sake, you cannot possibly believe this bullshit!” she admonished him. “My God, that is like saying if you have an earache in the Amazon Basin you are part unicorn.”
The foreign woman's ridiculing was too much and too rude, forcing the young doctor to reveal his course of diagnosis. Facing Sam, he turned his back on Nina to ignore her in return for her disregard of his intelligence. “Look, I know how this sounds. But you, Mr. Cleave, have conducted an alarming amount of concentrated heat through your organon visus in a short amount of time and although it should have made your head explode, it left you with only mild damage to your lens and retina!”
He glanced at Nina. “That was the basis of my diagnostic conclusion. Do with it what you will, but that is just a little too weird to dismiss as anything but supernatural.”
Sam was dumbstruck.
“So that is the reason of my crazy vision,” Sam said to himself.
“The excessive heat caused minor cataracts, but those can be removed by any ophthalmologist once you return home,” the doctor said.
Remarkably, Nina was the one who prompted him to elaborate on the other side of his diagnosis. With more respect and curiosity in her tone of voice, Nina asked the doctor about Sam's vision problem from an esoteric perspective. At first reluctant to entertain her query, he agreed to give Nina his take on the peculiarity of what had happened.
“All I can say is that Mr. Cleave’s eyes suffered a temperature similar to that of lightning and came off with minimal damage. That alone is unnerving. But when you know the villagers' stories, such as I do, you remember things, especially things like an angry blind god that killed the entire village with sky fire,” the doctor recounted.
“Lightning,” Nina said. “So that's why they insisted that Sam was dead while his eyes were rolled back into his skull. Doctor, he was having a seizure when I found him.”
“Are you sure it was not just a byproduct of the electrical current?” the doctor asked.
Nina shrugged, “Could be.”
“I remember none of that. When I woke up, I only remember being hot, half blind and extremely confused,” Sam admitted with a very perplexed frown on his forehead. “I know even less now than I did before you told me all this stuff, doc.”
“None of this was supposed to be a solution to your problem, Mr. Cleave. But this was nothing short of a miracle, so I at least owed you a bit more insight as to what might be happening to you,” the young man told them. “Look, I don't know what caused this ancient…” he looked at the skeptical lady with Sam, not wanting to provoke her derision again. “I don't know what mysterious anomaly caused you to cross the rivers of the gods, Mr. Cleave, but if I were you, I would keep it a secret while seeking the help of a witchdoctor or a shaman.”
Sam laughed. Nina did not find it at all funny, but she held her tongue about the more unsettling things she had seen Sam do when she had found him.
“So, I am possessed by an ancient god? Oh, sweet Jesus!” Sam guffawed.
The doctor and Nina exchanged looks, having a silent accord between them.
“You have to remember, Sam, that in ancient time, forces of nature that can be explained by science today were referred to as gods. I think that is what the doctor is trying to make clear here. Call it what you will, but there is no doubt that something extremely bizarre is happening to you. First the visions, and now this,” Nina clarified.
“I know, love,” Sam appeased her, with a chuckle. “I know. It just sounds so fucking crazy. Almost as crazy as time travel or man-made wormholes, you know?” Now he looked bitter and broken through his smile.
The doctor gave Nina a frown at Sam's mentions of time travel, but she only shook her head dismissively and waved it off. As much as the physician believed in the weird and wonderful, she could hardly explain to him that his male patient had suffered a nightmarish few months as involuntary captai
n of a teleporting Nazi ship that defied all laws of physics just a while back. Some things were just not meant to be shared.
“Well, doctor, thank you so much for the medical – and mystic – help,” Nina smiled. “Ultimately you have been of far greater help than you will ever know.”
“Thanks, Miss Gould,” the young doctor smiled, “for finally believing me. You are both welcome. Please take care, okay?”
“Aye, we are tougher than a hooker’s…”
“Sam!” Nina interrupted him. “I think you need some rest.” She raised an eyebrow at the amusement of both men who were laughing it off as they said their goodbyes and left the doctor's office.
Late in the evening, after well-deserved showers and tending to their respective injuries, the two Scots went to bed. In the dark, they listened to the rush of the nearby ocean, when Sam pulled Nina closer.
“Sam! No!” she protested.
“What did I do?” he asked.
“My arm! I cannot lie on my side, remember? It is burning like hell and it feel as if the bone is rattling around in the socket,” she complained.
He was quiet for a bit as she recovered her spot on the bed with effort.
“You can still lie on your back, right?” he flirted playfully.
“Aye,” Nina replied, “but my arm is bound over my tits, so, sorry Jack.”
“Only your boobs, right? The rest is fair game?” he teased.
Nina scoffed, but what Sam did not know was that she was smiling in the dark. After a brief pause, his tone was far more serious but relaxed.
“Nina, what was I doing when you found me?” he asked.
“I told you,” she shielded.
“No, you gave me the synopsis,” he refuted her answer. “I saw how you held back at the hospital when you told the doctor in what state you found me. Come on, I might be daft and silly sometimes, but I am still the world's best investigative journalist. I have gotten through insurgent deadlocks in Kazakhstan and followed a lead to a terrorist organization hideout in the heated wars of Bogota, baby. I know body language, and I know when sources are holding out on me.”
Order of the Black Sun Box Set 5 Page 5
