Order of the Black Sun Box Set 8

by Preston William Child

  “Already?” she moaned. “But we have only been here thirty minutes.”

  Kasper was not a temperamental man by nature, yet he raised his voice to convey the urgency of the situation, to impress the weightiness of the predicament. “Please, can we go? We came with your car, otherwise you could have stayed longer.”

  “Jesus, why would I want to stay longer?” she snapped at him.

  ‘Great start to what would have been a lovely relationship. That, or this is true love,’ he thought. But her aggression was actually sweet. “I only stayed this long to get to dance with you? Why would I want to stay, if you were not here with me?”

  He could not be angry at that. Kasper’s emotions were running the gamut with the beautiful woman and the looming destruction of the world in brute opposition. Eventually he took the hysteria down a notch to implore, “Can we please just go? I have to get in touch with someone about something very important, Olga. Please?”

  “Of course,” she said. “We can go.” She took his hand and rushed away from the crowd with a giggle and a wink. Besides, they already paid me.”

  “Oh good,” he replied, “and here I was feeling bad.”

  They rushed out and Olga drove back to Kasper’s house, but someone else was already waiting for him there, sitting on his front porch.

  “Oh, fuck no,” he mumbled as Olga parked her car in the street.

  “Who is that?” she asked. “You don’t look happy to see them.”

  “I am not,” he affirmed. “That is someone from work, Olga, so if you do not mind, I really do not want him to meet you.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Just, please,” he got a little frantic again, “trust me. I do not want you to know these people. Let me share a secret with you. I really, really like you.”

  She smiled warmly. “I feel the same.”

  Normally, Kasper would be flushing in ecstasy at this, but the urgency of the trouble he was dealing with, out-weighed the pleasant. “So, then you will understand that I do not want to mix someone who makes me smile with someone I detest.”

  To his surprise, she grasped his predicament entirely. “Of course. I will drive off to the shop after you get out. I need some olive oil for my Ciabatta anyway.”

  “Thank you for understanding, Olga. I will come call on you when all this is sorted out, alright?” he promised, squeezing her arm gently. Olga leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, but she said nothing. Kasper got out of the car and heard it drive away behind him. There was no sign of Karen, and he hoped that Olga would remember the half-jack she asked for as reward for the baking all morning.

  Kasper tried to look nonchalant as he walked up the driveway, but the fact that he had to round the exorbitant vehicle parking his in, scratched like sandpaper at his composure. Seated on Kasper’s stoop chair, as if he owned the place, was the reprehensible Clifton Tuft. In his hand he cradled a bunch of Greek grapes, plucking them off one by one and popping them between his equally oversized teeth.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be back in the United States already?” Kasper sneered, keeping his tone between mockery and misplaced humor.

  Clifton cackled, believing the latter. “Sorry to encroach on you like this, Kasper, but I believe you and I have business to discuss.”

  “That is rich, coming from you,” Kasper replied, unlocking his door. He intended to make it to his laptop before Tuft could see that he had been trying to find David Purdue.

  “Now, now. There is no rule book that says we cannot rekindle our former partnership, is there?” Tuft twanged in his trail, simply assuming he was invited in.

  Kasper quickly minimized the window and closed the lid of his laptop. “Partnership?” Kasper scoffed with a chuckle. “Did you partnership with Zelda Bessler not yield the results you hoped for? I believe I was merely the surrogate, the foolish mastermind, to the two of you. What is the matter? Does she not know how to apply the intricate mathematics or has she run out of outsourcing ideas?”

  Clifton Tuft nodded with a bitter smile. “Take all the low blows you want, my friend. I will not disagree that you earned that resentment. After all, you are correct in all those assumptions. She does not have a clue how to proceed.”

  “Proceed?” Kasper frowned. “On what?”

  “Your previous work, of course. Is that not the work you believed she stole from you to her own credit?” Tuft asked.

  “Well, yes,” the physicist affirmed, yet he still looked a bit flabbergasted. “I just…thought…I thought you scrapped that failure.”

  Clifton Tuft grinned and placed his hands in his sides. He tried to swallow his pride gracefully, but it meant nothing, coming across as just awkward. “That was not a failure, not completely. Um, we never told you this after you left the project, Dr. Jacobs, but,” Tuft hesitated, looking for the softest way to break the news, “we never ceased the project.”

  “What? Are you all out of your fucking minds?” Kasper seethed. “Do you even realize the repercussions of the experiment?”

  “We do!” Tuft assured him earnestly.

  “Really?” Kasper called his bluff. “Even after what happened to George Masters, you still believe you can involve biological components into the experiment? You are as insane as you are stupid.”

  “Hey now,” Tuft warned, but Kasper Jacobs was too deep into his sermon to care what he said and to whom it was offensive.

  “No. You listen to me,” the usually introverted and modest physicist grunted. “Admit it. You are just the money here. Cliff, you don’t know what the difference is between a variable and a cow’s udder and we all know it! So please, stop inferring that you understand what you are really funding here!”

  “Do you realize what kind of money we could make if this project is successful, Kasper?” Tuft insisted. “It will render all nuclear weapons, all nuclear energy sources obsolete. It will invalidate all current fossil fuels and their mining. We will spare the earth more drilling and fracking. Don’t you see? If this project is successful, there will be no wars over oil or resources. We will be the sole provider of inexhaustible energy.”

  “And who will be buying it from us? You mean, you and your court of nobles will benefit from it all, and those of us who made it happen will be kept on to manage the generating of this energy,” Kasper set it out for the American billionaire. Tuft could not really debunk any of it as hogwash, so he just shrugged.

  “We need you to make this happen, regardless of Masters. What happened there was human error,” Tuft coaxed the reluctant genius.

  “Yes, it was!” Kasper gasped. “Yours! You and your high and mighty lapdogs with white coats. It was your error that almost killed that scientist. What did you do after I left? Did you pay him off?”

  “Forget about him. He has what he needs to live out his life,” Tuft informed Kasper. “I will quadruple your salary if you come back to the facility just once more to see if you can mend Einstein’s equation for us. I will make you head physicist. You will have full control of the project, as long as you can assimilate it into the current project by October 25th.”

  Kasper threw his head back and laughed. “You are fucking kidding me, right?”

  “No,” Tuft replied. “You make this happen, Dr. Jacobs, and you will go down in the history books as the man who usurped Einstein’s genius and surpassed it.”

  Kasper soaked up the oblivious magnate’s words and tried to understand how such an articulate person could have such trouble fathoming catastrophe. He deemed it necessary to take a simpler, calmer tone to try one last time.

  “Cliff, we know what will be the result of a successful project, right? Now, tell me, what happens if that experiment goes wrong again? Another thing I need to know up front is who you plan to use as guinea pig this time?” Kasper asked. He made sure that he sounded sold on the idea to ascertain the rotten details of the plan Tuft was hatching with the Order.

  “Not to worry. You just make the equation apply,” Tuft said secretive
ly.

  “Good luck, then,” Kasper sneered. “I am not part of any project unless I know the bare bone facts around which I am to facilitate chaos.”

  “Oh, please,” Tuft scoffed. “Chaos. You are so dramatic.”

  “The last time we tried to apply the Einstein Equation, our test subject got fried. This proves that we cannot successfully launch this project without human casualties. It works, in theory, Cliff,” Kasper explained. “But in practice, generating the intra-dimensional energy will cause a backdraft into our dimension, frying every human being on this planet. Any paradigm including a biological component into this experiment will lead to extinction. All the money in the world cannot pay that ransom, buddy.”

  “Again, that negativity has never been the foundation of progress and breakthrough, Kasper. Jesus Christ! Do you think Einstein thought this impossible?” Tuft tried to convince Dr. Jacobs.

  “No, he knew it was possible,” Kasper countered, “and that is the very reason he tried to destroy the Dire Serpent. You fucking imbecile!”

  “Mind your words, Jacobs! I will tolerate a lot, but this shit will not fly with me for long,” Tuft seethed. His face had turned red and spittle coated the corners of his mouth. “We can always get someone else to complete the Einstein Equation, the Dire Serpent, for us. Do not think you are not expendable, pal.”

  Dr. Jacobs dreaded the idea of Tuft’s bitch, Bessler, perverting his work. Tuft had not mentioned Purdue, which meant that he had not yet learned that Purdue discovered the Dire Serpent already. Once Tuft and the Order of the Black Sun came into that knowledge, Jacobs would be expendable and that was a permanent dismissal he could not risk.

  “Alright,” he sighed, watching Tuft’s sickening satisfaction. “I’ll get back on the project, but I don’t want any human subjects this time. That is too heavy on my conscience, and I do not care what you or the Order thinks. I have morals.”

  17

  And the Yoke is Fixed

  “My God, Sam, I thought you had been killed in action. Where in God’s name have you been?” Purdue raved when he saw the tall, rugged journalist standing in his door. Purdue was still under the influence of his recent sedation, but he was cogent enough. He sat up in bed. “Did you bring the Lost City footage? I have to get to work on the equation.”

  “Christ, calm down, will you?” Sam scowled. “I went through hell and back because of this fucking equation of yours, so a polite ‘hello’ is the least you can do.”

  If Charles had a more colorful personality, he would have rolled his eyes by now. Instead, he stood stiff and disciplined, while fascinated at the two usually jovial men. They had both magically gone sour! Purdue had been a frantic maniac since he came home and Sam Cleave had turned into a bombastic jerk. Charles reckoned correctly, that both men had been through a great deal of emotional trauma and neither exhibited signs of good health or sleep.

  “Do you need anything else, sir?” he dared ask his employer, but surprisingly, Purdue was mellow.

  “No, thank you, Charles. Will you please close the door behind you?” Purdue requested politely.

  “Certainly, sir,” Charles replied.

  After the door clicked shut, Purdue and Sam stared intensely at one another. All they heard in the privacy of Purdue’s bedroom was the song of the finches that occupied the large pine tree outside and Charles discussing fresh sheets with Lillian a few doors down the hallway.

  “So, how have you been?” Purdue asked, performing the first obligatory display of courtesy. Sam laughed. He opened his camera case and removed an external hard drive from behind his Canon. He tossed it on Purdue’s lap and said, “Let us not bullshit ourselves with pleasantries. This is all you want from me and frankly, I am goddamn happy to be rid of the bloody footage once and for all.”

  Purdue smirked, shaking his head. “Thanks Sam,” he smiled at his friend. “In all seriousness, though, why are you this happy to get rid of it? I recall you saying that you wanted to edit it into a documentary for the Wildlife Society or something.”

  “That was the plan at first,” Sam admitted, “but I am just tired of it all. I was kidnapped by a crazed madman, trashed my car, and ended up losing a dear old colleague, all in the stretch of three days, mate. According to his last entry – I hacked his e-mail,” Sam explained, “according to that, he was onto something big.”

  “Big?” Purdue asked, slowly getting dressed behind his antique rosewood screen.

  “End-of-the-world big,” Sam confessed.

  Purdue peeked over the top of the ornate carvings. He looked like a sophisticated meerkat at attention. “And? What did he say? And what is this about a madman?”

  “Oh, it is a long story,” Sam sighed, still reeling from the ordeal. “The coppers will be looking for me, since I wrote off my car in broad daylight…in a car chase through Old Town, endangering people and such.”

  “My God, Sam, what is his problem? Did you elude him?” Purdue inquired, groaning his way into his clothing.

  “Like I said, it is a long story, but first I have to follow up on the assignment my former colleague at the Post was working on,” Sam said. His eyes looked moist, but he kept talking. “Have you ever heard of Aidan Glaston?”

  Purdue shook his head. He had probably seen the name somewhere but it did not ring any bells for him. Sam shrugged, “They murdered him. Two days ago, he was found in the room where his editor had him checked in on a sting operation in Castlemilk. With him was some bloke he probably knew, shot execution style. Aidan was strung up like a fucking pig, Purdue.”

  “Oh my God, Sam. I am so sorry to hear that,” Purdue sympathized. “Are you taking his place on assignment?”

  As Sam had hoped, Purdue was so obsessed with starting work on the equation as soon as possible, that he forgot to ask about the madman who chased Sam. It would have been too much to explain in such short time, and ran the risk of alienating Purdue. He would not want to know that the work he had been dying to start on was reputed to be a tool of destruction. Surely, he would have written it off on paranoia or deliberate interference from Sam, so the journalist left it at that.

  “I have spoken to his editor and she is sending me to Belgium for that clandestine summit, masquerading as a renewable energy address. Aidan thought it was a front for something sinister, and the mayor of Oban is one of them,” Sam elucidated concisely. He knew that Purdue paid little attention anyway. Sam got up and closed his camera case, glancing at the drive he left for Purdue. His stomach gave a twinge when he looked at it lying there, silently menacing, but his gut feeling had no integrity without facts to back it up. All he could do was to hope that George Masters was deluded, and that he, Sam, had not just delivered the extinction of mankind into the hands of a physics wizard.

  Sam was relieved to leave Wrichtishousis. This was odd, because it was like his second home. Something about the equation on the footage he gave Purdue made him feel sick. Only a few times in his life, did he feel like this and it was usually after he had committed misdemeanors or when he lied to his late fiancé, Patricia. This time it had a darker, final feel to it, but he chalked it up to his own guilty conscience.

  Purdue was gracious enough to lend Sam his 4x4 until he could get a new set of wheels. His old car had not been insured, because Sam preferred to keep under the radar of public records and low security servers, for fear that the Black Sun might get curious. After all, the police would probably lock him up if they traced him. It was a godsend that his car, inherited from a deceased high school pal, was not registered in his name.

  It was late afternoon. Sam marched proudly up to the big Nissan and gave it a wolf whistle, pressing the immobilizer button. The lights flashed on and off twice before he heard the central locking disengage. A pretty woman came out from under the trees, heading for the front door of the mansion. She was carrying a medical bag, but she was dressed in plain clothes. In passing, she smiled at him, “Was that whistle for me?”

  Sam had no idea how to respond
. If he said yes, she could slap him, and he would be lying. If he denied it, he would be a weirdo caking with a car. Quick thinker that Sam was, he stood there like a fool with his hand in the air.

  “Are you Sam Cleave?” she asked.

  Bingo!

  “Aye, that would be me,” he beamed. “And you are?”

  The young woman strolled up to Sam and wiped the smile off her face. “Have you brought him the footage he asked, Mr. Cleave? Have you? I hope so, because his health had been spiraling downward while you took your sweet bloody time delivering it to him.”

  Her sudden cattiness was out of line, in his opinion. Where he would usually appreciate feisty women as a fun challenge, the toils of late left him slightly less docile.

  “Excuse me, doll, but who are you to chastise me?” Sam returned the favor. “From what I observe here with your little bag, is that you are a home care giver, a nurse at best, and certainly not one of Purdue’s long standing associations.” He opened the driver side door. “Now why don’t you skip along and do what you are paid to do, hey? Or do you wear a nurse’s outfit for those special call-outs?”

  “How dare you?” she hissed, but Sam could not hear the rest. The lavish comforts of the 4x4’s cab was especially good at soundproofing and it reduced her rant to a muffled babbling. He started the vehicle’s engine and relished the luxury before reversing dangerously close to the upset stranger with the medical bag.

  Laughing like a naughty child, Sam waved at the security guards at the gate as he left Wrichtishousis in his wake. On his way down the snaking road toward Edinburgh, his phone rang. It was Janice Noble, editor of the Edinburgh Post, notifying him of the rendezvous point in Belgium, where he was to meet her local correspondent. From there, they would sneak him into one of the private boxes in the gallery of the La Monnaie, to enable him to gather as much intelligence as possible.

  “Please be careful, Mr. Cleave,” she said finally. “Your airline ticket has been e-mailed to you.”