Order of the Black Sun Box Set 6

by Preston William Child

  Nina took a quickly glance behind her, the motion of her head stirring life into her long dark tresses as they were swept up by her movement. “She was here…wa-wait…Jo!” she cried to somewhere beyond the screen. “Come say hell to your crush.”

  Sam chuckled and laid his forehead in his hand, “Is she still after my drop-dead gorgeous ass?”

  “Aye, she still thinks you are the dog’s bollocks, precious,” Nina joked. “But she is more in love with her sea captain. Sorry.” Nina winked as her eyes trailed her approaching friend, Joanne Earle, the history teacher who helped them uncover the treasure of Alexander the Great.

  “Hi Sam!” the jovial Canadian waved at him.

  “Hey Jo, are you well?” he asked.

  “I am doing great, hon,” she beamed. “This is a dream come true for me, you know. I am finally getting to have fun and travel and all while teaching history!”

  “Not to mention that finder’s fee, hey?” he winked.

  Her smile vanished, relinquished for a gawk of greed as she nodded and whispered, “I know, right? I could so do this for a living! And as a bonus, I landed a sexy old Canuck with a fishing charter business. Sometimes we go out on the water just to watch the sun set, you know, when it is not too shy to show.”

  “Sounds brilliant,” he smiled, silently praying for Nina to take over again. He adored Joanne, but she could talk a man’s head off. As if she read his mind, she shrugged and smiled, “Okay, Sam, I am going to give you back to Dr. Gould. Bye now!”

  “Bye-bye, Jo,” he said with a raise of his eyebrow. ‘Thank God.’

  “Listen, I’ll be back in Edinburgh in two days, Sam. I am bringing with me the booty we made off with for donating the Alexandrian treasure, so we have a reason to celebrate. I just hope Purdue’s legal team puts out so that we can celebrate together,” she informed the journalist. “If you are not o some assignment, that is.”

  Sam could not tell her about the unofficial assignment Purdue had put him on to find out as much about Karsten’s business affiliations as possible. For now, it had to remain a secret between the two men alone. “No, just some research here and there,” he shrugged, “but nothing important enough to keep me away from a pint.”

  “Lovely,” she said.

  “So will you be going straight back to Oban?” Sam asked.

  She pulled up her nose. “Don’t know. I considered it, since Wrichtishousis is off limits right now.”

  “You are aware that yours truly has a quite lavish townhouse in Edinburgh as well,” he reminded her. “It is no historical fortress of myth and legend, but it does have a very cool Jacuzzi and a full fridge of cold beverages.”

  Nina chuckled at his boyish attempts to lure her to his place. “Alright, alright, you have convinced me. Just pick me up from the airport and make sure your car’s boot is empty. I have a shit load of luggage this time, light packer that I am.”

  “Aye, I will, lassie. Got to go, but you will text me your arrival time?” he asked.

  “I shall,” she said. “Stay hard!”

  Before Sam could throw a suggestive comeback to counter Nina’s mockery about a private joke between them, she had ended the call. “Shit!” he groaned. “I have to get faster than that.”

  He got up and headed for the kitchen for a beer. It was almost 9pm, but he fought off the urge to bother Paddy begging for an update on Purdue’s trial proceedings. Apart form that he was quite nervous about it for Purdue’s sake and this made him a little reluctant to phone Paddy. Sam was in no position to receive bad news tonight, but he hated being so predisposed to the negative outcome scenario.

  “Strange how courage fills a man when he is holding a beer, don’t you reckon?” he asked Bruichladdich, who was stretching lazily on the lobby chair just outside the kitchen door. “I think I shall give Paddy a call. What do you think?”

  The large ginger cat gave him an indifferent look and leapt onto the protruding wall section next to the stairs. He slowly stole towards the other end of the mantle and laid down again – right in front of a picture of Nina, Sam and Purdue after the ordeal they survived after searching for the Medusa Stone. Sam pursed his lips and nodded, “I thought you would say that. You should be a lawyer, Bruich. You are very persuasive.”

  He picked up the phone, just as there was a knock at the door. The sudden rapping almost had him dropping his beer and he gave Bruich a glance in passing. “Did you know that was going to happen?” he asked under his breath as he peeked through the peephole. He looked at Bruich. “You were wrong. It’s not Paddy.”

  “Mr. Cleave?” the man outside implored. “May I please have a word?”

  Sam shook his head. He was not in the mood for visitors. Besides, he really enjoyed the solitude from strangers and demands. The man knocked again, but Sam placed his finger over his mouth, gesturing for his cat to keep quiet. In response, the feline just turned around and curled up to sleep.

  “Mr. Cleave, my name is Liam Johnson. An associate of mine is related to Mr. Purdue’s butler, Charles, and I have some information that might be of interest to you?” the man explained. Inside Sam, a war waged between his comfort and his curiosity. Dressed in only a pair of jeans and socks, he was not in the mood to look decent, but he had to know what this Liam bloke had to say.

  “Hang on,” Sam cried inadvertently. ‘Well then, I suppose my curiosity got the better of me.’ With an anticipatory sigh, he opened the door. “Hello Liam.”

  “Mr. Cleave, good to meet you,” the man smiled nervously, “but may I please come in before someone sees me here?”

  “Certainly, after I have seen some identification,” Sam replied. Two old ladies of the gossiping variety passed by his front gate, looking taken aback at the handsome, rugged journalist’s shirtless appearance as they nudged each other. He tried not to laugh, giving them a wink instead.

  “That certainly made them move along faster,” Liam grinned as he watched them hasten, holding out his credentials to Sam for scrutiny. Surprised at the swiftness with which Liam produced his wallet, Sam could not help but be impressed.

  “Inspector/ Agent Liam Johnson, Sector 2, British Intelligence, and all that,” Sam murmured and rambled as he read the fine print, checking for little authentication words Paddy taught him to look for. “Alright, mate, come in.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cleave,” Liam said as he stepped inside quickly, shivering as he shook slightly to rid it of the loose rain droplets that could not penetrate his pea coat. “Can I put my brolly on the floor?”

  “No, I’ll take that,” Sam offered and hung it upside down over a special coat rack where it could drip down onto his rubber mat. “Want a beer?”

  “Muchly, thanks,” Liam replied happily.

  “Really? Did not expect that,” Sam smiled as he picked up a can from his fridge.

  “Why? I am half Irish, you know,” Liam jested. “I venture we could outdrink the Scots any day.”

  “Challenge accepted, my friend,” Sam played along. He directed his guest to sit down on the two-seat couch he kept for visitors. As opposed to the three seater where Sam spent more nights than in his bed, the two seater was a lot firmer and not so lived in as the other.

  “Now, what are you here to tell me?” Sam asked.

  Clearing his throat, Liam suddenly became quite earnest in his response. Looking very concerned, he answered Sam with a softer tone of voice. “Your research came up on our radar, Mr. Cleave. Luckily I caught it right off the bat, because I have a keen reaction to movement.”

  “No shit,” Sam mumbled as he took a hefty few swigs to dampen the worry he felt at being detected so easily. “I saw that when you stood on my doorstep. You are a man of keen observation and swift response to it. Am I correct?”

  “I am,” Liam replied. “That is why I instantly noticed that there was a security breach in the official records of one of our highest executives, Joe Carter, head of MI6.”

  “And you are here to deliver an ultimatum for a fee lest you le
ak the perpetrator’s identity to the Secret Intelligence dogs, right?” Sam sighed. “I don’t have the means to pay of blackmailers, Mr. Johnson, and I do not like people who do not just come out and say what they want. What do you want from me to keep this under wraps, then?”

  “You misunderstand, Sam,” Liam hissed firmly, his demeanor instantly revealing to Sam that he was not as mild mannered as he seemed. His green eyes flashed, ablaze with the vexation of being accused of such banal desires. “Which is the only reason I would let that insult slide. I am Catholic and we cannot prosecute those who insult us out of innocence and ignorance. You do not know me, but I tell you now I am not here to shake you down. Jesus Christ, I am above that.”

  Sam kept to himself that Liam’s reaction literally frightened him, but after a moment, he realized that his assumption, fathomable as it was, was uncalled for before he allowed the man to state his business properly. “I apologize, Liam,” he told his guest. “You are right to be pissed at me.”

  “I am just so tired of people who assume things about me. I suppose it comes with the turf. But let us put that aside and I will tell you what is going on. Since Mr. Purdue’s rescue from that woman’s house, the high commission of British Intelligence has issued a clamp down on security measures. I think it came from Joe Carter,” he explained. “And at first I could not figure what would make, if you pardon me, a common citizen who just happens to be wealthy, Carter to respond in such a way. Now, I am not working for the intelligence sector for nothing, Mr. Cleave. I see suspicious behavior a mile away and the way in which a powerful man like Carter responded to Mr. Purdue’s being alive and well struck a bit of a chord with me, you know?”

  “I see what you mean. There are things I can unfortunately not disclose about the research I am doing here, Liam, but I can assure you that you are dead-on about that suspicious feeling you have,” Sam agreed.

  “Listen, Mr. Cleave, I am not here to squeeze information out of you, but if what you know, what you are not telling me, pertains to the integrity of the agency I work for, I need to know,” Liam urged. “Fuck Carter’s agenda, I am after the truth.”

  10

  Cairo

  Under the warm skies of Cairo there was a stirring of souls, not in the poetic sense, but in the sense of the devout feeling something sinister moving through the cosmos to burn the world like a hand holding a magnifying glass just at the right angle and distance to scorch mankind. But these sporadic collections of holy men and faithful followers kept the odd shift in axial precession of their stargazers between themselves. Ancient bloodlines safely secured within secret societies had maintained their status amongst their own, but preserving the ways of their forefathers.

  At first, the people of Lebanon suffered the darkness of a sudden power failure, but as technicians were struggling to find the problem, the news broke from other cities in other countries that the electricity had failed, running chaos from Beirut to Mecca. It was not a day later when reports came in from Turkey, Iraq and parts of Iran that inexplicable power outages were causing havoc. Now in Cairo and Alexandria parts of Egypt were darkening as well, rushing two men from the stargazer tribes to look for a source other than the grid of a power station.

  “Are you sure Number Seven has gone off orbit?” Penekal asked his colleague, Ofar.

  “I am one hundred percent sure, Penekal,” Ofar answered. “Look for yourself. It is a monumental shift, and only stretching over an amount of days!”

  “Days? Are you mad? That is impossible!” Penekal raved, dismissing his colleague’s theory outright, but Ofar raised a gentle hand and waved it calmly. “Come now, brother. You know that nothing is impossible to science or God. The one wields the wonder of the other.”

  Contrite for his outburst Penekal sighed and motioned for Ofar to forgive him. “I know. I know, Ofar. It is just so…” he gasped impatiently, “it had never been scribed that such a phenomenon had ever taken place. Maybe I am full of fear that this is true, because the thought of one heavenly body changing orbit without any disturbance in its fellows is downright terrifying.”

  “I know, I know,” Ofar sighed. Both men were in their late sixties, yet their bodies were still very healthy and their faces carried hardly a sign of the weathering of age.

  They were both astronomers and scholars of the theories of Theon of Alexandria, primarily, but they welcomed the modern teachings and theories, keeping track of all the latest astro-technology and news from global scientists. But apart from their modern accumulative knowledge, the two old men kept to the antique tribes’ traditions and as they faithfully studied the skies, they would keep in mind both science and mythology. Usually the hybrid consideration of the two subjects gave them a wonderful middle ground to overlap wonder with logic which aided in forming their opinions. Until now.

  With his hand quivering on the tube of the eyepiece, Penekal slowly pulled back from the small lens he had peered through, his eyes still fixed ahead of him in astonishment. Finally, he turned to face Ofar, his mouth dry and his heart sinking. “By the gods. It is happening in our lifetime. I cannot find the star either, my friend, no matter where I seek it.”

  “One star has fallen,” Ofar lamented, looking down in sorrow. “We are in trouble.”

  “Which one is this, according to Solomon’s Codex?” Penekal asked his friend.

  “I already looked. It is Rabdos,” Ofar said forebodingly, “the lamp lighter.”

  Distraught, Penekal wandered with a labored pace to the window of their vantage room on the 20th Floor of the Hathor Building in Giza. From up there they could see the vast Cairo Metropolis, where below them the Nile snaked like liquid azure through the cities. His old dark eyes floated across the city below and then found the hazy horizon and they trailed along the dividing line between the world and the heavens. “Do we know when it fell?”

  “Not exactly. From the entries I made on my observations it must have happened between Tuesday and today. That means Rabdos fell in the last 32 hours,” Ofar noted. “Shall we say something to the elders of the city?”

  “No,” came the swift negation from Penekal. “Not yet. If we say one thing that brings to light what we really use this equipment for they could easily disband us, taking millennia of observation with them.”

  “I see,” Ofar said. “I have run the Osiris Charter program on the constellations from this observatory and the smaller one in Yemen. It will keep track of more falling stars when we are not able to, so we will be able to keep track.”

  Ofar’s phone rang. He excused himself and left the room while Penekal sat down at his desk to watch the screen saver image propel through space, giving him the illusion that he was flying among the stars he loved so much. This always calmed his demeanor and the hypnotic repetition of the stars passing had a meditative quality to him. However, the disappearance of the seventh star in the perimeter of the Leo constellation was sure to give him sleepless nights. He heard Ofar’s footsteps come into the room at a faster rate than they had left the room with.

  “Penekal!” he wheezed, having been unable to master the rush.

  “What is it?” Penekal asked.

  “I just got word from our people in Marseille, at the observatory atop Mont Faron, outside Toulon,” Ofar panted so that his friend had to pat him lightly to take a breath first. Once the hasty old man caught his breath, he continued. “They say a woman was found hanging in a French villa in Nice a few hours ago.”

  “That is awful, Ofar,” Penekal replied. “It truly is, but what does it have to do with you, such that you had to get a phone call about it?”

  “She was swinging from a rope made of hemp,” he wailed. “And here is the proof that it is of great concern to us,” he said, taking a deep breath. “The house belonged to a nobleman, Baron Henri de Martine, who is known for his diamond collection.”

  Penekal caught on to some familiarities, but he could not quite bring two and two together until Ofar finished his account. “Penekal, Baron Henri de
Martine was the owner of the Celeste!”

  Abandoning rapidly the urge to utter some holy names in shock, the thin old Egyptian covered his mouth with his hand. Those seemingly random facts had a devastating implication on what they knew, what they followed. Quite honestly, these were alarming signs of the advent of an apocalyptic event. It was not written, or believed in, as a prophecy at all. But it was part of King Solomon’s encounters, written by the wise king himself in a hidden codex only familiar to those of Ofar and Penekal’s tradition.

  What this scroll mentioned were merely the important precursors to celestial events that carried Apocryphal connotations. Nothing in the codex ever stated that this would happen, but upon the accounts of Solomon’s writings in this instance the falling star and the subsequent catastrophes were more than coincidence. Those who walked in tradition and could see the signs were expected to save mankind if they realized the portent.

  “Which one was dealt with spinning ropes of hemp, again?” he asked loyal old Ofar, who was already paging through the writings to locate the name. After jotting down the name under the previous fallen star, he looked up and revealed it. “Onoskelis.”

  “I am completely stunned, my old friend,” Penekal said, shaking his head in disbelief. “This means the Freemasons have found an alchemist, or the worse scenario – we have a Magician on our hands!”

  11

  The Parchment

  Amiens, France

  Abdul Raya slept soundly, but he did not dream. He had never understood it before, but he did not know what it was like to travel through unknown places, or see unnatural things twist under the plot threads of dream weavers. Nightmares never came to him. Never in his life could he relate to the terrible nocturnal tales of slumber told by others. Never did he wake in a sweat, shaking with terror, or still reeling from a sickening panic imbued by the hellish world behind his eyelids.