Order of the Black Sun Box Set 5

by Preston William Child

  Suddenly the station started broadcasting music. He recognized Metallica, but he did not know the song. It gradually faded off as the female voice started reading number codes and Detlef jotted them down. When the music started again, he concluded the broadcast was over. Sinking back in the chair, he breathed out a long sigh of relief. He was intrigued, but his training also warned him that he could not trust anyone he did not know.

  If his wife was killed by people she had been involved with, it might well have been Milla and her associate. Until he knew for sure, he could not just follow their orders.

  He had to find a scapegoat.

  16

  Nina stormed into Dr. Helberg’s office. The waiting room was empty save for the receptionist who looked ashen. As if she knew Nina she immediately pointed toward the closed doors. Behind them, she could hear a man's voice speaking very deliberately and very calmly.

  “Please. Just go in,” the receptionist motioned to Nina, standing up against the wall in terror.

  “Where is the security guard?” Nina asked softly.

  “He took off when Mr. Cleave started to levitate,” she said. “Everyone ran out of here. On the upside, with all the trauma it caused, we will have a lot of future business,” she shrugged.

  Nina walked into the room where she heard only the doctor speaking. She was grateful that she did not hear “the other Sam” talking as she pressed down on the door handle. Carefully she stepped across the threshold into the room that was only lit by the sparse light of the midday sun that filtered through the closed blinds. The psychologist saw her but kept talking as his patient was hovering upright, inches from the ground. It was a frightening sight, but Nina had to remain calm and assess the problem logically.

  Dr. Helberg was talking Sam back from his session, but as he clicked his fingers to wake Sam, nothing happened. He shook his head at Nina, indicating his befuddlement. She looked at Sam, whose head was tilted back and his milky eyes wide open.

  “I have been trying to bring him out for almost half an hour,” he whispered to Nina. “He told me you witnessed him in this state twice before. Do you know what is going on?”

  She shook her head slowly, but she thought to make use of the opportunity. Nina drew her cell phone from her jacket pocket and pressed the record button to take a video of what was going on. Gently she lifted it to get Sam's whole body into the frame before she spoke.

  Gathering her courage, Nina took a deep breath and said, “Kalihasa.”

  Dr. Helberg frowned at her, shrugging. “What is that?” he mouthed to her.

  She held out one hand to request his silence before she said it louder. “Kalihasa!”

  Sam's mouth opened, accommodating the voice that Nina feared so much. The words came out of Sam, but it was not his voice or his lips forming them. In terror, the psychologist and the historian stared at the frightful episode.

  “Kalihasa!” the voice said in a choir of undefined gender. “The vessel is primitive. The vessel is few in existence.”

  Neither Nina nor Dr. Helberg knew what the statement was about apart from its reference to Sam, but the psychologist urged her to carry on for the sake of learning about Sam’s condition. She shrugged at the doctor, having no idea what to say. There was a slim chance that this thing could be conversed or reasoned with.

  “Kalihasa,” Nina stammered timidly. “What are you?”

  “Conscious,” it replied.

  “What kind of being are you?” she asked, rephrasing what she thought was a miscomprehension on the part of the voice.

  “Conscious-ness,” it answered. “Your mind is wrong.”

  Dr. Helberg gasped excitedly at the discovery of the entity's ability to converse. Nina tried not to take it personally.

  “What do you want?” Nina asked somewhat more boldly.

  “To exist,” it said.

  To her left, the endearing podgy shrink was bursting with amazement, absolutely fascinated by what was happening.

  “With humans?” she asked.

  “To enslave,” it added while she was still talking.

  “To enslave the vessel?” Nina asked, getting the hang of formulating her questions.

  “The vessel is primitive.”

  “Are you a god?” she uttered without thinking.

  “Are you a god?” it repeated.

  Nina sighed irritably. The doctor motioned for her to carry on, but she was frustrated. Frowning and pursing her lips she told the doctor, “It is just repeating what I say.”

  “It is not answering. It is asking,” the voice replied to her surprise.

  “I am not a god,” she answered modestly.

  “That is why I am,” it replied quickly.

  Suddenly Dr. Helberg fell to the floor and began to convulse just like the native man at the village. Nina panicked, but she kept recording both men.

  “No!” she shouted. “Stop! Stop it now!”

  “Are you God?” it asked.

  “No!” she shouted. “Stop killing him! Right now!”

  “Are you God?” it asked her again while the poor psychologist was writhing in agony.

  She shouted sternly as a last resort before she would start looking for a pitcher of water again. “Yes! I am God!”

  Within a blink, Sam fell to the ground, and Dr. Helberg stopped screaming. Nina rushed to check on them both.

  “Excuse me!” she called the receptionist. “Can you come in here and help me, please?”

  Nobody came. Assuming that the woman left like the others, Nina opened the door to the waiting room. The receptionist sat on the waiting room sofa with the security guard's gun in her hand. At her feet lay the slain security officer, shot in the back of the head. Nina retreated slightly, not willing to risk the same fate. She swiftly helped Dr. Helberg to sit up after his painful spasms, whispering to him not to make a sound. When he was conscious, she moved to Sam to assess his condition.

  “Sam, can you hear me?” she whispered.

  “Aye,” he groaned, “but I feel weird. Was that another fit of madness? I was half aware of it, this time, you know?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I was conscious through it all, and it was as if I was gaining control over the current that went through me. That argument with you just then. Nina, that was me. It was my thoughts that came out a bit skewed and sounded like taken from the script of a horror film! And you know what?” he whispered with immense urgency.

  “What?”

  “I can still feel it running through me,” he admitted, clutching at her upper arms. “Doc?” Sam blurted out when he saw what his haywire powers had done to the doctor.

  “Shh,” Nina hushed him and pointed toward the door. “Listen, Sam. I need you to try something for me. Can you try to use that… other side… to manipulate someone's intentions?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” he reckoned. “Why?”

  “Look, you just controlled Dr. Helberg’s brain patterns to induce a seizure, Sam,” she pressed. “You did that to him. You did it by manipulating the electrical activity in his brain, so you have to be able to do it with the receptionist. If you don’t,” Nina warned, “she is going to kill us all in a minute.”

  “I have no idea what you're talking about, but alright, I'll try,” Sam agreed and stumbled to his feet. He peeked around the corner and saw the woman sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette with the security officer's gun in the other hand. Sam glanced back to Dr. Helberg, “What is her name?”

  “Elma,” the doctor answered.

  “Elma?” As Sam called from behind the corner, something happened that he had not apperceived before. When she heard her name, her brain activity increased, establishing Sam's connection with her instantly. The mild electrical current shot through him like a wave, but it was not painful. Mentally it felt as if Sam had latched onto her with some invisible tether. He was not sure if he should speak to her out loud, and order her to toss aside the gun or if she should just to think it.r />
  Sam elected to employ the same method he recalled using while under the influence of the strange force before. Just thinking of Elma, he sent her a command, feeling it slide along the perceived tether towards her mind. As it connected with her Sam could feel the merging of his thoughts with her consciousness.

  “What is happening?” Dr. Helberg asked Nina, but she held him away from Sam and whispered for him to keep still and wait. They both watched from a safe distance while Sam’s eyes rolled back again.

  “Oh dear Lord, no! Not again!” Dr. Helberg moaned under his breath.

  “Quiet! I think Sam is in control of it this time,” she speculated, hoping to her lucky stars that she was correct in her assumption.

  “Maybe that was why I could not snap him out of it,” Dr. Helberg told her. “It was not a hypnotic state after all. It was his own mind, just expanded!”

  Nina had to agree that it was a fascinating and logical deduction on the part of the shrink she had not had much professional respect for before.

  Elma stood up and flung the weapon toward the middle of the waiting room. Then she walked into the doctor's office with her cigarette in her hand. Nina and Dr. Helberg ducked down at the sight of her, but all she did was smile at Sam and gave him her cigarette.

  “Can I get you one too, Dr. Gould?” she smiled. “I have two more left in the pack.”

  “Uh, no thanks,” Nina answered.

  Nina was astonished. Was the woman who just murdered a man in cold blood actually offering her a fag? Sam looked at Nina with a boastful smile, to which she just shook her head and sighed. Elma went to the reception desk and called the police.

  “Hello, I want to report a murder at the office of Dr. Helberg in the Old Town…” she reported her deed.

  “Holy shit, Sam!” Nina gasped.

  “I know, right?” he smiled, yet he looked a bit nervous at the discovery. “Doc, you are going to have to make up some sort of story to make sense to the police. I did not control any of that shit she did in the waiting room.”

  “I know, Sam,” Dr. Helberg nodded. “You were still under hypnosis when that happened. But we both know that she was not in control of her own mind, and that bothers me. How can I let her spend the rest of her life in prison for a crime she technically did not commit?”

  “I am sure you can testify as to her mental stability and maybe find an explanation that will prove that she was in a trance or something,” Nina suggested. Her phone rang, and she went to the window to take the call while Sam and Dr. Helberg watched Elma’s moves to make sure she did not flee.

  “In truth, whatever controlled you, Sam, wanted to kill, whether it was my assistant or me,” Dr. Helberg warned. “Now that it's safe to assume that this force is your own consciousness, I implore you to be very mindful of your intentions or attitude, or you may end up killing someone you love.”

  Nina suddenly caught her breath so fiercely that both men looked at her. She looked staggered. “It's Purdue!”

  17

  Sam and Nina had left Dr. Helberg’s office before the police showed up. They had no idea what the psychologist was going to tell the authorities, but they had more important things to think about now.

  “Did he say where he was?” Sam asked as they headed for Sam’s car.

  “He was being held in a compound run by… guess who?” she sneered.

  “The Black Sun, by chance?” Sam played along.

  “Bingo! And he gave me a sequence of numbers to punch into one of his gadgets at Wrichtishousis. Some contraption that looks like an Enigma machine,” she informed him.

  “Do you know what that looks like?” he asked as they drove to Purdue’s estate.

  “Aye. It was extensively used by the Nazis during World War II to communicate. It's basically an electro-mechanical rotor cipher machine,” Nina explained.

  “And do you know how to work this thing?” Sam wanted to know because they knew he'd be out of his depth at trying to mess with complex codes. He once attempted coding for a software course and ended up inventing a program that did nothing but creating umlauts and stationary bubbles.

  “Purdue gave me some numbers to enter into the machine, He said it would give us his location,” she replied, looking over the seemingly senseless sequence she jotted down.

  “I wonder how he got to a phone,” Sam said as they neared the hill where Purdue’s massive manor lurched over the winding road. “I hope he does not get discovered while waiting for us to get to him.”

  “No, he is safe for now. He told me that the guards were ordered to kill him, but that he managed to escape the room they had kept him in. Now he is apparently hiding in the computer room, and hacked into their communication lines to be able to call us,” she explained.

  “Ha! Old school! Well done, old cock!” Sam grinned at Purdue’s resourcefulness.

  They pulled into the drive at Purdue's home. Security knew their boss' closest friends and cordially waved at them when they opened the huge black gates. Purdue's assistant met them at the door.

  “You found Mr. Purdue?” she asked. “Oh thank God!”

  “Aye, we have to get to his electronics rooms, please. It is very urgent,” Sam requested, and they rushed to the basement room Purdue had modified into one of his holy chapels of inventions galore. On one side, he kept everything he was still working on, and on the other side was everything he had completed but hadn't patented yet. To anyone who did not live and breathe for engineering or was less technically inclined, it was an impenetrable maze of wires and hardware, monitors, and tools.

  “Shit, look at all this stuff! How are we supposed to find that thing in here?” Sam worried. His hands ran along the sides of his head as he scanned the place for what Nina had described as a sort of typewriter. “I see nothing like that here.”

  “Me neither,” she sighed. “Just help me look through the cabinets as well, please Sam.”

  “I hope you know how to work that thing, or else Purdue is history,” he told her as he opened the doors of the first cupboard, ignoring all the jokes he could crack about the pun of his statement.

  “Given all my research for one of my final study papers back in 2004 I should be able to figure it out, don't fret,” Nina said as she rummaged through some cabinets that stood lines up against the east wall.

  “I think I found it,” he said casually. From an old green army locker, Sam lifted a beat-up looking typewriter and held it up like a trophy. “Is this it?”

  “That's it, yes!” she exclaimed. “Right, set it down over here.”

  Nina cleared a small desk and moved a chair from another table to sit down in front of it. She retrieved the paper with numbers Purdue had given her and got to work. While Nina focused on the process, Sam was thinking about the most recent events, trying to make sense of it. If he could truly make people obey his orders, it would change his life completely, but something about his convenient new talent set of a whole bunch of red lights in his head.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Gould,” one of Purdue's house staff called from the door. “There is a gentleman here to see you. He says he spoke to you on the phone a few days ago about Mr. Purdue.”

  “Oh shit!” Nina cried. “I completely forgot about that guy! Sam, the man who alerted us that Purdue was missing? That must be him. Shit, he is going to be upset.”

  “For what it's worth, he seems very nice,” the staff member chipped in.

  “I'll go talk to him. What is his name?” Sam asked her.

  “Holtzer,” she answered. “Detlef Holtzer.”

  “Nina, Holtzer is the surname of the woman who died at the Consulate, isn't it?” he asked. She nodded, and suddenly remembered the man's first name from the phone call now that Sam mentioned it.

  Sam left Nina to her task and went up to speak to the stranger. When he entered the lobby, he was surprised to see the powerfully built man sipping tea with such refinement.

  “Mr. Holtzer?” Sam smiled, reaching out a hand. “Sam Cleave. I'm a f
riend of Dr. Gould and Mr. Purdue. How can I help you?”

  Detlef smiled cordially and shook Sam’s hand. “Good to meet you, Mr. Cleave. Um, where is Dr. Gould? It seems that everyone I try to speak to disappears and I get someone else in their place.”

  “She is just caught up in a project right now, but she is here. Oh, and she apologizes that she has not yet gotten back to you, but it seems you were able to find Mr. Purdue’s estate quite easily,” Sam noted as he sat down.

  “Have you managed to find him yet? I really need to speak to him regarding my wife,” Detlef said, playing open cards with Sam. Sam looked at him, intrigued.

  “What, may I ask, did Mr. Purdue have to do with your wife? Were they business associates?” Sam knew full well that they met at Carrington's office to talk about the landing ban, but he wanted to get a feel for the stranger first.

  “No, in fact, I wanted to ask him some questions about the circumstances of my wife's death. You see, Mr. Cleave, I know she did not commit suicide. Mr. Purdue was there when she was killed. You understand where I am going with this?” he asked Sam with a sterner demeanor.

  “You think Purdue killed your wife,” Sam affirmed.

  “I do,” Detlef answered.

  “And you are here to seek revenge?” Sam asked.

  “Would that be so far-fetched?” the German giant retorted. “He was the last person to see Gabi alive. What else would I be here for?”

  The atmosphere between them quickly grew tense, but Sam tried to apply reason and keep things civil.

  “Mr. Holtzer, I know Dave Purdue. He is not a killer by any measure. The man is an inventor and explorer who is only interested in historical relics. How do you think would he benefit from your wife's death?” Sam inquired in his journalistic prowess.

  “I know that she was trying to expose the people behind those assassinations in Germany and that it has something to do with the elusive Amber Room that was lost in the Second World War. Then she went to meet David Purdue and died. Do you not think that just a tad suspicious?” he asked Sam confrontationally.