Order of the Black Sun Box Set 8

by Preston William Child

  The grandfather clock struck eleven, surreptitiously reminding the guests of the time, but Bernard spoke over the chimes, hoping not to end the night quite so soon.

  “One night, Bormann showed Ronald her collection of knives and swords. He said that he had never seen so many priceless pieces in one place, all apparently genuine weapons seized from heads of state and kings of Europe. Practically everywhere where art and private collections were plundered by the Axis forces, Bormann obtained one or two blades courtesy of her colleagues in the SS,” Bernard relayed. “Among them was what she claimed was King Arthur’s sword, Caliburnus or Excalibur, still sheathed. Ronald was so blinded by the powerful sword that he paid no mind to the scabbard, which seemed to have been crudely fashioned only to carry the sword in. But he would change his mind about that in a few weeks from that night.”

  “Why? What happened?” Purdue pressed, just as Bernard hoped he would.

  “Well, weak with hunger and barely able to see anymore, Ronald was close to death. On that fateful night, he returned from Bormann’s chamber, as usual. When the guard took him at the door, Ronald brandished an Egyptian khopesh Bormann received as gift from the North African campaign. He was wearing the sheath with Excalibur under the blanket that was draped over his shoulders, holding the khopesh there too. He killed the guard and dressed in his uniform, just as Bormann had instructed.”

  “No way,” Ava said. “Did they elope?”

  Her brother shook his head. “Problem was that the Stabsscharführer got wind of Bormann’s reprehensible affiliation with the Brit and expected this to happen at some point,” Bernard narrated like a professional. “In true Nazi fashion, they locked Bormann, along with her dogs, in the same cell where Colin and his family were devoured. There they left her to starve. Unfortunately for her, the dogs got hungry sooner. They dismembered her long before she had the privilege of starvation.”

  “Jesus Christ, Bern,” Ava bitched angrily. “I told you I do not want to know.”

  “You are not the only one here, doll,” her brother bit back. “If you do not like the details, go and sit in the kitchen. We will call you when the conversation turns to kittens and boy bands, okay?”

  “Fuck you, Bernard,” she hissed. Sam quickly interjected with an offer of a double whiskey and a charming wink.

  “That is when Ronald escaped?” Purdue asked Bernard.

  “They were supposed to leave together after he dressed as an officer that night, you see? But they got to her before she could join him and he certainly could spare no time waiting. He fled with Excalibur and the scabbard without a single bullet harming him!” he told Purdue. “Up until the end of his journal entries there is no further mention of the location of Excalibur.”

  “Wait, so the scabbard kept him from getting killed?” Nina asked, remembering young Brian’s defiance of certain death under the lightning bolt the day before. ‘Holy shit, it is the real Warkadur?’ she thought in astonishment. Her phone rang in her purse, amassing attention from all present.

  “A call this late could only mean two things,” Purdue teased. “I sure hope it is not an emergency.”

  22

  Wiles and Whims

  Nina’s voicemail message knocked the wind out of her. She stood in the darkness of Purdue’s office, playing the message a few times over before she could believe it. Then, it dawned on her that she had no time to tarry. Breathing rapidly in panic she flew downstairs, back to the dining hall.

  “Purdue, it has been a wonderful evening, but I am afraid I have to leave,” she excused herself. It was unlike Nina to exhibit such stress. Sam immediately rose from his seat and emptied his glass of whiskey.

  “I will come with you, whatever it is,” he offered.

  “Wait, what is the matter, my dear?” Purdue asked, also getting up to join her and Sam. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  She looked thoroughly upset. “A…a friend of mine is in the hospital,” she stammered, clearly unwilling to share too much. “I have to…see him immediately.”

  “Nina, it is way past visiting hours,” Ava corrected her. The silver-haired beauty did not mean to second-guess Nina’s story. She simply stated a fact.

  “Look, lassie, this is not your business, alright?” Nina barked at her. Ava recoiled at the dark eyed historian’s bloodshot eyes, her cheeks wet with tears. “I have to get to Glasgow right fucking now!”

  Sam grabbed her and scooped up his jacket. “I will drive her there. Purdue, thank you so much for a riveting party, old man. We will call in as soon as we are there.”

  “Good. Good. Please keep me posted on Nina’s wellbeing,” he told Sam under his breath. “And do let me know what all this is about. I have rarely seen her like this.”

  “I know,” Sam agreed. “Bothers me too.”

  “Have any idea what it could be?” Purdue whispered.

  “Absolutely none,” Sam sighed, “but I will text you.”

  “Alright, be careful,” Purdue said, patting Sam on the back. He got a quick kiss from Nina before she left with Sam in tail. Out into the mid of night they headed to Glasgow, leaving Purdue to apologize to his guests. He found Bernard and Ava waiting in silence. As a matter of fact, the mood between the siblings had frozen to the point of melancholy.

  “Where has the party gone?” Purdue smiled.

  Bernard got up, groaning as he flattened the creases in his clothing. “It is getting rather late,” he told Purdue. “Much as I would like to stay, I do have an early morning engagement.”

  “That is a pity,” Purdue replied, feeling the sudden loss of merriment getting to him. He was honestly enjoying the evening. “One more for the road then? My night staff could pack you some of the feast while you have a nightcap. What say you?”

  “Nah,” Bernard said. “It is a good offer, but if I do not leave now I will never get out of here.”

  “With all the alcohol in your system?” Purdue persisted.

  “He drives just fine, even with jet fuel in his system,” Ava sighed. “I, on the other hand, am not planning to go anywhere.”

  Bernard and his sister briefly glanced at one another in silence, waiting for Purdue’s response.

  “Good!” the billionaire cheered. “Ava, of course you can stay the night. I have a dozen spare rooms for you to choose from.”

  “Thank you,” she smiled, leering at her brother.

  “Fine,” Bernard said. “You stay if you want.”

  He shook Purdue’s hand. “My friend, it has been an insightful and superb party. It was an honor to sit at this table with our best client yet. Regrettably I really have to leave.”

  “Certainly,” Purdue accepted the accolade, especially now that the beautiful Ava agreed to stay. Somehow, Bernard’s departure did not feel so heavy anymore. “We will have another powwow soon, I promise.”

  Ava heard her brother’s car fade into the darkness. With Sam gone, choosing to leave with the historian, Ava settled for the king of the castle. At least she could enjoy the spoils of her efforts to consolidate any form of relationship with David Purdue without interference from another woman.

  “Now, isn’t that a shame that they all have to leave,” she teased openly when the tall master of Wrichtishousis entered the warm room.

  “Terrible pity,” he played along, making a beeline for her. Ava stood in front of the hearth, her body accentuated by the fire. It was only when Purdue came closer to her that he realized that her fingers were undoing her blouse buttons. Her actions earned absolutely no protest from him. He closed the tall doors that barred the entrance to the great hall, and turned to find her waiting on the table, sipping red wine.

  “I might not be the ordained of the Brits, but tonight I shall conquer the most powerful territory of all,” Purdue recited playfully as he neared the nude beauty. “Does that not make me king after all?”

  23

  Crow’s Nest Sense

  On the M8, Sam and Nina cautiously rushed without drawing attention
to the speed at which they were traveling. It was Friday midnight, so the traffic cops would be having a busy night already. Luckily, the highway made allowances for higher speeds possible.

  She had spent most of the road telling Sam about the odd friendship she had cultivated with the young boy, Brian Callany. Sparing no small detail, but still keeping it concise, she told Sam about the school project. She told him about the boy and her torc, his encounter with the deadly bolt of lightning which he walked away from without injury and how the boy was frantic about his grandfather finding out about the scabbard.

  “All I can gather now,” she sighed, “is that his grandfather stole the bloody thing. That is why he would be so pissed if he found out his grandson found it. Imagine how you would fume. You steal a precious artifact in hopes of selling it, and your grandson walks into the public with the thing and shows it to everyone. I would kill him too, for jeopardizing my criminal ends like that.”

  “Alright, so you believe that this sheath the boy has is the real Warkadur. I get that. But now, tell me why I am cruising down the M8 to another city like a madman, when I could have been sipping a single malt with Purdue,” Sam inquired, still bewildered.

  “The message I received on my phone,” she explained, sniffing. Nina wiped her eyes with a tissue and looked out the window, clutching her phone in both hands.

  “What is it? Jesus, you look like a lottery winner with the wrong ticket, you know?” Sam urged her to share what upset her so. “I take it this is about the young lad. Is he okay? Is he dead? Just tell me what is directly causing you to cry, love.”

  “This message,” she choked on her emotions. “It is Brian. He is calling me from his mother’s cell phone. She…he says…two men took his grandmother and his mother while he was hiding, Sam.”

  “Holy shit!” Sam gasped. “What, just now?”

  She shook her head, dabbing with the tissue. “Yesterday night, or, well, this morning dark sometime.”

  “And he only calls you now?” Sam frowned. “Does he know why?”

  She shrugged. “He says nothing about his grandfather. I was there until this time, round about, and the guy still did not come home.”

  “Oh my God,” Sam grunted. “Could it be he is the reason?”

  “That is what I am thinking,” she replied, sounding a bit more stable now that she could actively hypothesize a bit with Sam. Now, at least, it felt as if someone is proactively helping her sort this out.

  “Did he say where to find him?” Sam asked.

  “Aye,” she affirmed. “The schoolyard. I have no idea why he has not gone to the police.”

  “Perhaps he trusts you more?” he comforted her. “Do not worry yourself. We will be there in a jiff.”

  At just before 1am, Sam pulled into the small drive that ran along the back of Gracewill Primary, looking for the ‘skew tree’ the boy told Nina to come to.

  “Nina, I do not want to sound like a nay-sayer, but this reeks of an ambush to me,” Sam warned. “Did the kid tell you how he got here, why he did not tell the police, shit like that?”

  “No,” she answered. She looked at Sam. “Jesus, no, Sam. Did I lead us into an ambush? Who would be looking to nail us? We have not fucked with anyone shady in almost a whole two months.”

  Sam had to smile at her casual assessment of the peril in their lives. He shrugged. “I just do not see why he would call you and not the cops. Surely they would be closer to his home, right?”

  Nina began to panic. “Turn around then,” she agreed. “You are right. It is just a voice mail. They could be holding the boy at gunpoint or something.” She gave it pause. “Then again, if that is the case, shouldn’t we do something to help?”

  “You told us at the mansion that someone is in hospital,” Sam reminded her. “What was that all about?”

  “I had to make it sound urgent and serious without alarming our new friends for no reason, so I made it up.” She scoffed. “I could hardly tell everyone that a schoolboy called me to meet him at his school’s prefab classrooms in the middle of the night because his family has been kidnapped. Even less so because of the scabbard he said he had with him, the very scabbard of which we heard a horrendous fiction tonight.”

  “Touché,” Sam said, but he still did not trust the circumstances of this exercise.

  Suddenly a small, pale child stepped out in front of the 4x4. Sam’s high beams blinded the boy, but she stood still, wincing.

  “Jesus!” Sam roared and slammed on the brakes. His hand instinctively drew back the hammer on his gun as the dust particles impaired view of the area around the truck. He could hear Nina gasping, waiting for the dust to clear before she jumped out.

  “Is that him?” Sam asked her. She nodded. “Just wait. We have to make sure there is nobody stalking from behind the car to ambush us when we got out.”

  “Aye,” Nina panted heavily. Her dark eyes glimmered in the dashboard light as she sought the dust cloud for signs of the child. Gradually the tan colored puff sank into the road, wiped away by the black night and the truck’s headlights. “Brian?” she bellowed from the inch of window she had wound down.

  “Tell him to come to the truck and get in, Nina,” Sam cautioned. “Do not get out and keep your door locked. I will unlock his when he gets in.”

  “Honey, get in the truck,” she told the boy. Dragging the ever-present scabbard with him, Brian reacted briskly enough, although she could see that he had suffered a head wound and was clearly dehydrated. With his hand firmly on the butt of his gun, Sam unlocked the rear passenger door for the child, surveying the surrounding area as he did.

  With a smooth leap, the child jumped into the back seat, lugging in the huge sheath with much effort. “I’m in,” he told them and with a click, the mechanism locked his door. Sam looked at Nina. “Now what? Where do we go?”

  “To the police, of course,” she replied.

  “No! No, Miss Nina!” Brian objected.

  Nina rolled her eyes back in frustration. “Here we go again.”

  “No, really, Miss Nina, the police will give me to them,” the boy explained.

  “How do you know?” Sam asked. The child hesitated, having no idea who the dark stranger was. “I only talk to Miss Nina.”

  “Really?” Sam snapped back. “Then how’s about you get out of my truck and use that big mouth to get you out of trouble, hey?”

  “Sam!” Nina groaned. “Jesus, he is just a child.”

  “Aye, and children should not give their elders any shit, I say,” he retorted. Nina knew that Sam was the more tolerant of the two of them, and if he was intolerant, it was a miracle that the feisty Nina was not. She looked back at Brian.

  “Sam is a very close friend of mine, Brian. You can trust him completely,” she vouched for Sam to keep the peace.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Brian asked.

  “Aye, I am, laddie. I am Miss Nina’s boyfriend,” Sam teased deliberately, getting that long awaited punch on the arm.

  “Why can we not go to the police, then?” she asked Brian.

  “The men who were at my house made my mother go to the police to report me missing, Miss. I saw them waiting right behind her while she reported it, to make sure if I go to the police, they can catch me and take the scabbard, Miss. I was almost walking in there too, but then I saw them,” Brian recounted in a quivering voice. “They have mum and grandma, Miss Nina. I cannae find out where grandpa is.”

  “Why did it take you so long to contact me?” she asked him, as Sam pulled the vehicle out of the back road and into the eastern street block.

  “I fell, Miss,” he explained to Nina. “That dizzy came back and I fell with my head against something in the bath, so I only woke up a few hours ago.”

  “And you brought the scabbard with you because…?” Sam inquired.

  “It keeps me safe, sir,” Brian replied. “Every time I have this sheath on I cannot get hurt. Well,” his eyes fell to the floor, “I get hurt, but not dead.”
r />   “Warkadur,” Nina whispered furtively to Sam.

  He looked at her with a frown. “You think?”

  “Sam, I can almost guarantee it,” she confirmed. “What I have seen…let us just say I am not surprised that these men have gone to such lengths.”

  “So where are we going?” Sam asked. “I am still just driving around here.”

  “Brian, did they mention where they are taking mum?” she asked the boy.

  “I don’t know, Miss Nina. They spoke another language, but I heard grandpa’s name, so they were probably looking for him?” Brian guessed, holding on to the scabbard.

  Nina had to think quickly. Having a missing child with them can have criminal implications. “High risk situation,” she said out loud. “But we cannot leave him anywhere.”

  “Wrichtishousis?” Sam asked.

  “No,” she disagreed. Nina swept her hair back over her ear and tried to think. “We have to find out what these people want, and we will not know until they find Brian.”

  “Christ, Nina,” Sam hissed quietly. “You cannot use him as bait! Are you daft?”

  “Look, as long as he wears that scabbard, nothing can harm him,” she argued.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” he raved. “Do you actually believe that?”

  “I know what I have seen, Sam,” she rejoined.

  “No,” Sam objected. “Fuck this. We are going to my place first. Find out what the big deal is about this relic. If these people are after Brian’s grandfather, why are they looking for the boy? I think he has something they want.”

  They drove back to Edinburgh, hoping to keep Brian’s face out away from the public eye until they could figure out who the people were looking for him, the people who thought it acceptable to kidnap his family. Brian had fallen asleep. Exhausted, he finally caved to the rocking of the vehicle on the long highway. In silence, save for the odd words, Nina and Sam drove back to Edinburgh to get Brian out of the direct harm due to his affiliation with Court Callany.