Order of the Black Sun Box Set 4

by Preston William Child

  “Good man,” Purdue smiled, placing a reassuring hand on Zain’s chest. “Nina, let’s go. We have to release the Geheimnis right now, or we are going with her."

  Purdue and Nina raced toward the towing winches. He called out the time left as they braved the massive waves that lurched over the tug boat and crashed hard against it. It was late afternoon, and they were entering Somali waters at the Horn of Africa. Storms had been forecast for the next few days, and the passengers of the Aleayn Yam were already getting a taste of what was awaiting them.

  Purdue disengaged the first of the three connections while Nina screamed for Sam. The sinister black ship sailed quietly behind them as if she made a point of keeping Nina’s calls at bay. Nina leered at the Black Sun symbol on the hull. “You won’t have him, bitch.”

  "Nina! Help me to disconnect the third! We have less than two minutes left!" Purdue cried. His voice came and went in her ear under the rage of the waves. She scanned the dreadful black vessel for any signs of Sam, but they must have all been deep in the bowels of the ship where Sam had gone to show Ali the ghastly remains of the Jews and officers. Given their heinous fate, Ali was bound to be convinced that they were water walkers and that the Geheimnis would have to be let go.

  “Sam!” she screamed one last time. “Sam! Two minutes! Two minutes!” Her throat burned from the effort as she cast one final glance at the cursed ship. “I hope you heard me, love. I hope you heard me.”

  "Nina!" Purdue urged. The tugboat began to tremble to more than the raging ocean.

  "It's happening!" Nina cried hysterically. Between her, Purdue and Zain they managed to disengage the mechanical towing gear as the Aleayn Yam started shaking wildly under the pulsing electromagnetic power that grew stronger by the second. Some of the pirates came out on the death ship’s deck; squealing frightened by what they could not understand. Sam was not among them, and neither was Ali.

  “Ten seconds!” Purdue screamed as the last of the locks slipped loose and the cables dropped into the furious foam of the ocean. Purdue grabbed Nina and fell against the bulwark, holding her tightly. They could not get further away, but at least the ties between the vessels had been severed.

  “SAM!” she screamed until her voice failed, then she buried her face in Purdue’s shirt, sobbing bitterly. As the horrifying shriek of metal and the atrocious song of science merged to a dreadful cacophony, sounding deafeningly over the sea, Purdue watched the Nazi ship shake and bend into a wormhole of magnetic charge. Flashes of lightning radiated into the atmosphere as the horrified faces of the Somali pirates distorted and froze before their bones were shattered inside their bodies.

  Purdue closed his eyes as the majestic clap of the charge closed the portal. Nina felt the tug boat jolt forward a little as the waters filled the hollow space where the Geheimnis had been only a second before, and the sea recovered. Only the din of the ocean’s hiss was left, apart from the dreadful nothingness of lost lives. Through the rush of the angry sea, only Nina's desperate whimpers resounded, as Zain and Purdue stood, shocked into silence by what they had just witnessed.

  On the horizon, the sun pierced through the clouds to paint the ocean in silver and yellow. Purdue had some serious amends to make, and he hoped that Sam had somehow escaped the Geheimnis before she had vanished. Nina clung to him as she mourned Sam, but Purdue knew that her arms were only around him because of her love for the journalist.

  Malgas could not need to keep his secret anymore. He had to tell someone that the find was nothing but a hoax.

  He forgave Cheryl for keeping her addiction a secret, trying to impress him.

  Ali should just have abducted the expedition members instead of concealing that they were pirates. His secret had gotten him killed.

  Crystal’s hidden motivation behind her participation in the excursion was resounding prove that greed was deadly even for the most powerful.

  Zain and Sibu’s secret intentions had brought them to a juncture that had forced them to reevaluate their paths. One of them had chosen wisely; the other not so much.

  With all the evidence and footage destroyed, the entire venture would always remain nothing but another marine myth, a tall tale told by sailors to scare tourists.

  Purdue’s secret knowledge of Crystal’s plan had put his friends’ lives at risk once more, probably causing Sam’s death and alienating Nina for good.

  Most of all, the seventh secret prevailed. The great mystery ship would remain an elusive puzzle, even to those who would briefly lay eyes on her in the morning fog or marvel at her dead silence in the rage of the storm.

  THE END

  The Medusa Stone

  1

  “He looks like Jesus.”

  Abbie glared at her dark haired college roommate and gasped in astonishment. “Excuse me?”

  “I said ‘He looks like Jesus.’ I could never date a guy like that,” the mousy-faced bulimic scoffed modestly. “I think it would be…” she hesitated as Abbie gawked.

  “It would be what? I will tell you, Jessica. It will be fucking hot!” Abbie exclaimed as the two students rounded the wet street corner where the dangling sign of the pub creaked eerily in the wild night wind.

  “No, it would be…sacrilegious. Imagine getting all hot and heavy with this bloke and in the throes of passion you look at him, and you see Jesus hovering over you, all panting and sweaty,” Jessica explained her aversion for the man they were less than clandestinely following through the streets of Edinburgh.

  “Jesus!” Abbie recoiled. “Uh, so to speak.”

  “See? It would just be weird. So if we can get up close and personal, you can close the deal. I mean, he is delicious, but he looks way too close to those pictures in my mother’s house,” she told Abbie, still grossed out by the unfortunate resemblance that confronted them both on this night of man hunting and pub crawling.

  “Your loss. I don’t spend time overthinking stuff, especially with an arse like that! Check it. I would follow that tight fitting buttock bulls eye to the ends of the earth,” Abbie vowed dreamily. “Or wherever we end up.” She winked at her friend and dragged her aside when the man turned and looked around for a moment.

  “At least out of Blair Street, I reckon,” Jessica muttered as they left the lovely joviality of the student haunt at the infamous vaults.

  “Wonder who he is looking for?” Abbie nudged Jessica.

  Jessica whispered with no small measure of suspicion, “Maybe he can feel you fucking him with your eyes, you cheap bint.” Abbie giggled at her friend’s chastisement, but she did consider that maybe the attractive stranger could feel the presence of his two adolescent stalkers. He had a peculiar look about him; that was no maybe. She loved the image he portrayed. The tall, slender man with the bears and almost feminine features had long black hair that fell to his shoulder blades, ending in kinks that coiled lazily against the virgin glow of his loose buttoned shirt.

  “He reminds me of Duncan McLeod, actually,” Abbie told her friend. “Not Jesus!” she frowned at Jessica, still trying to dismiss the obviously subliminal or spiritual vexation between them.

  “I don’t think he is a Highlander, love,” Jessica remarked as she plastered her thin lips with lip gloss that made her mouth reek of strawberry and Jägermeister with that faint hint of garlic she exuded from the light meal they shared at a cheap restaurant near South Bridge earlier. “He does look exotic, though. Are you seriously going to follow him all night?”

  Her friend slapped her playfully, “Only until we catch him. Look at him! He keeps moving. I mean, fuck, can he not pick a place and be done with it?”

  The two 20-year-olds stood in the shadow cast by the irregular placement of building corners, waiting for the tall, dark stranger to make a decision. It felt like an eternity, but it took him less than 20 seconds to figure out where he wished to go next. As soon as he turned, the two girls were on his trail again, ceasing their randy discussions long enough to concentrate on remaining undetected.

>   Although being way too cavalier with her taste, Abbie felt especially attracted to the oddly out of place man they had been following out of sheer fascination. It was unlike her to do this. Normally, she was the one being chased down. Jessica, though, could not care less about her friend’s exploits. Being a business major, she realized that her life was bland, even by party standards, to resort to stalking a bloke with her erratically minded best friend.

  The light breeze was mild in this part of the city, which was already a tad alien this time of year. Just like the appearance of the interesting looking stranger in the night club, the climate seemed to have come with him as if he wore it like a cloak. Even the sky bore fewer clouds than usual, giving Edinburgh a roof of occasional fleecy shapes that drifted lazily across the shimmering street lights.

  Below, the calm heavens the city streets twisted as the night drew on toward the wee hours of Sunday morning. Utterly inebriated from the evening’s drinks, Abbie and Jessica stayed out of sight as their ankles suffered under the torment of the cobbles. While they navigated on stiletto heels with the motor skills of timid fawns in the maze under the castle towers, the two girls noticed that the stranger was leading them to less populated areas where the shadows felt darker, and the stench of the sewers was more prominent.

  “God, I am going to yak!” Jessica complained as they ducked under a foot bridge off Cowgate. “Is all this worth it, Abs? Jesus, grow up.”

  “You will not believe this,” her friend whispered, sounding alarmingly sober-ish to the nauseous business student whose hand she was holding too tightly. “But I am not just following him because he is so dreamy. I think this beautiful specimen is actually up to something shady.”

  “Aye. Exactly my point,” Jessica groaned, tugging hard at Abbie’s hand to urge her in the opposite direction. “I am beginning to get a very bad feeling about all this, mate.”

  “You are just paranoid because you feel like shit, babe. Keep it down or puke it out, but stop trying to talk sense into me, alright?” Abbie insisted. “I am hell bent on seeing where he is going. It is evident that he is not out to pick up babes or drink his troubles away. Something really intense is going to happen, I bet you.”

  “Betting your life, perhaps?” her friend persisted.

  “Shut up!” Abbie rasped as quietly as she could. Her feet were killing her, throbbing from her calves down to her toes with a fiery sting she could not ease. But she had to see what was ensuing with the attractive stranger with his long locks and almost marble perfect features. “He is heading to Chambers Street. I wonder what he is thinking. He keeps looking behind him.”

  “Aye!” Jessica scoffed. “He is smelling your bloody pheromones, you skank. Come on, babe, let’s go home. Please, let’s just get out of here.”

  “No! Just a few more minutes, just to see what he is up to,” the other girl whispered, her face now totally obscured by the shadows out of reach of the street lights. She sounded utterly spellbound. “Look, he is checking his phone.”

  “Probably a drug deal,” Jessica burped, fighting to hold her liquor.

  “Come,” Abbie said as the man moved on towards the next block of buildings. On their left, the National Museum of Scotland lurched like a lonely giant while ahead of them the lean figure of the stranger danced over the pavement like a black specter.

  Suddenly Jessica stopped dead in her tracks, almost jerking her friend right off her feet. Abbie was furious, fearing she would lose sight of the man she was adamant to meet before going home.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” she seethed through her rapid breathing.

  “Look!” Jessica pointed ahead in terror. “He is going towards Greyfriars, Abs! Grey…friars…Kirkyard! There is NO way I am setting foot on the world’s most haunted graveyard.”

  Abbie had not realized. She took a second to look past where the stranger’s silhouette was dangling farther and farther away. Blossoming into full view was the infamous Greyfriars Kirkyard, reputed to be the home of various wicked phantoms reminiscent of the ancient history of Scotland. Behind the entrance where the man was headed the black trees swayed solemnly over the antique gravestones underneath. Abbie thought of thinking twice, but her curiosity for the gorgeous mystery’s end game was overwhelming.

  “Wait, you are actually considering this?” Jessica marveled, still pulling roughly at Abbie’s hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here!”

  “Jess,” Abbie sighed, “I thought you’d be tougher than this.”

  “And I thought you’d be more sensible than this,” Jessica moaned. “You know the shit that goes down in that place! I’m out.”

  Jessica just started retreating at first, hoping that her friend would follow suit, but Abbie was too engrossed to move. Her fingers reluctantly unlocked from Jessica’s, evoking a disappointed wail from her.

  “You are not serious,” Jessica said, shaking her head in disbelief. “You are not serious!”

  “Babe, I’ll call you as soon as I have met him, I promise,” Abbie promised with a gentle tone.

  “You’ll be dead,” Jessica replied, still shaking her head.

  And so the two girls parted regrettably, although Jessica walked much slower away from her friend than Abbie raced towards her target. She crossed the converging streets in the meager moonlight, still smelling his cologne as she slipped into the deserted dwelling of superstition and memories. The grass was short and wet under her uncomfortable shoes as she stole along the shadows of the trees, navigating carefully through the old stones and markers.

  It was quite beautiful, she thought, and marveled at the age of the plain, dark grey monuments, weathered and corroded by time. He looked majestic, like a character from a Gothic novel, striding toward the center of four decrepit tombstones. They looked unremarkable and small against his towering silhouette, but that was all she could observe for the moment.

  The man stopped and turned immediately, sending Abbie into a thick oak tree as she lunged out of sight. Her heart pounded in excitement and a little touch of fear, wondering what would happen if he discovered her hiding there. The student pinched her eyes shut and tried to steady her hard breathing. From a short distance away, she heard the sound of voices, perhaps three different men is she listened correctly. Words in a foreign tongue confused her, but by their hastened words and rapid verbalization, it was clear that they were arguing. Heated whispers disturbed the deathly peace of the vast graveyard as she stood inanimately, waiting for the handsome stranger to part with his company so that she could follow him home and hopefully still strike up a conversation.

  Suddenly, Abbie heard an altercation ensuing, but she stayed still in fear of detection while she tried to figure out how many people were involved. The ground shuddered slightly as one of the men hit the lawn with a thump and soon after Abbie could hear a crack of a jaw under the knuckle of another.

  ‘Fight! God, I am dying to see if he is winning!’ she thought. But as she tried to look, her courage abandoned her, and she reassumed her position. The cracking of bone sounded through the silence a few more times before it stopped, leaving the place draped in nocturnal tranquility. Afraid to emerge too quickly, Abbie gave it a few more seconds to listen for the stranger’s footsteps.

  All she could hear was the odd vehicle flashing by in the Gordian Knot of streets outside the enclosure, some distant music from a party and the rustling leaves all about her as the night breeze stirred. There were no footsteps, though. Holding her breath, Abbie slowly inched her head forward to see around the hard bark of the trunk that concealed her. To her disappointment, the stranger had vanished and so did whoever he had argued with.

  Flustered by her fruitless hunt and the wasting of drinking time on her pursuit, she sighed and started from the security of her hiding place. Her absent quarry left her utterly disenchanted. But something struck her as unusual, so much so that she did a double take on the place where she last saw the stranger. Abbie’s eyes stretched in terror and incredulity as she gaspe
d at the vision before her.

  “Oh sweet Jesus!” she shrieked behind her hands.

  Where there were four ordinary grave markers before, a figure in stone had now joined the formation. It was a statue of a short, plump man raising his arm in defense and he stood in plain sight, fashioned from the same material as the tombstones.

  “That is impossible!” Abbie whispered to herself, astonished at the ludicrous arrival of such a heavy statue out of the blue. “That is just fucking impossible!”

  As the irrationality racked her brain, Abbie hastened to the exit, hoping that she would wake with a horrible hangover and only the remnants of the nightmare left in her reasoning. She kicked off her shoes and swept them up in her hands, racing for the streets where rationale prevailed, and she dared not look back even once at the cursed witchcraft of Greyfriars Kirkyard, left in her wake.

  2

  Dr. Heidmann’s heels clapped on the pristinely polished floor of the museum. In his hands, he held a plethora of plans for his upcoming exhibition on Ancient Greek Art, The Mythos Paradigm with which he hoped to establish a renewed interest in the beauty of antique sculpture. A failed artist himself, he endeavored to bring what he could not capture with his diluted talent to the masses, regardless. James Heidmann was driven purely by a love for art and a passion for educating the modern mind on the unfathomable treasures of a millennium past, for the most part.

  His footsteps echoed through the hallway of the magnificent Queen Elizabeth II Great Court. The museum was still closed, but he had to deliver his ideas to the curators before opening today, otherwise he would forfeit his slot for consideration. The slight built 50-year-old wore his trademark bow tie which hardly made up for his scruffy hair and round framed glasses. As he rushed along the corridors, the sublime works of architects and painters hardly merited his attention, but he certainly enjoyed the smell of the vast complex where he had always wanted to lecture.