In his hand he held a pouch containing several cubic zirconias along with one rather large stone Purdue’s assistant provided, as per her boss’ request. Under Sam’s direction, Liam had visited Wrichtishousis two days before to collect the stones from Purdue’s private collection. The lovely forty-something lady managing Purdue’s money matters, was kind enough to warn Liam about disappearing with the certified diamonds.
“Steal these, and I will cut off your balls with a blunt nail clipper, alright?” the charming Scottish lady had said to Liam as she handed over the pouch he was to plant in Karsten’s mansion. It was a fond memory, indeed, as she looked the type as well – sort of, Miss Moneypenny meets American Mary.
Once inside the easily accessible country estate, Liam recalled his scrutiny of the house’s blueprints to find his way to the study where Karsten did all his underhanded business. Outside he could hear the sub-par security men chatting with the housekeeper. Karsten’s wife and daughters had arrived two hours before and all three had retired to their bedrooms for some recuperative sleep.
Liam made his way into the small lobby at the end of the ground floor east wing. With ease he picked the lock of the office and gave his surroundings one more spy before entering.
“Holy shit!” he whispered when he snuck in, almost forgetting to keep track of the cameras. Liam felt his stomach churn as he closed the door behind him. “Nazi Disneyland!” he gasped under his breath. “My God, I knew you were up to something, Carter, but this? This is next level shite!”
The entire office was adorned in Nazi symbolism, paintings of Himmler and Göring, and several busts of other high-ranking SS-High Commanders. Behind his chair, a banner hanged on the wall. “No way. The Order of the Black Sun,” Liam affirmed as he crept nearer to the awful sigil embroidered in black silk thread upon red satin cloth. Most disturbing to Liam was the looping video clips of awards ceremonies held by the Nazi Party in 1944, continually playing on his flat screen monitor. Inadvertently he turned into another painting boasting the hideous face of Yvetta Wolff, daughter of Karl Wolff, Obergruppenführer of the Waffen-SS. “This is her,” Liam muttered quietly, “Mother.”
‘Get your shit together, lad,’ Liam’s inner voice urged. ‘You don’t want to spend your last moment in this pit, do you?’
For a trained Black Ops specialist and technological espionage expert such as Liam Johnson cracking Karsten’s safe was child’s play. In the safe Liam found another document with the Black Sun symbol on it, an official memorandum to all members that the Order had tracked down the exiled Egyptian Freemason, Abdul Raya. From an asylum in Turkey, Karsten and his associate High Level members had arranged for Raya’s discharge after research introduced them to his work during the Second World War.
His age alone, the fact that he was still alive and well, were all unfathomable traits that evoked the admiration of the Black Sun. In the opposite corner of the room, Liam also fixed a security feed monitor with sound feature, similar to Karsten’s own private cameras. The only difference was that this one sent feeds to the security office of Mr. Joe Carter, where it could easily be intercepted by Interpol and other government agencies.
Liam’s mission was all an elaborate job to incriminate the backstabbing MI6 leader and expose his closely guarded secret via live television stream as soon as Purdue activated it. Along with the information Sam Cleave obtained for his exclusive report, Joe Carter’s reputation was in serious peril.
“Where are they?” Karsten’s shrill voice echoed through the house, starting the sneaking MI6 intruder. Liam quickly put the pouch of diamonds in the safe and closed it as swiftly as he could.
“Who, sir?” a security staff member asked.
“My wife! M-m-my daughters, you goddamn imbecile!” he barked, his voice passing by the study doors and whining all the way up the stairs. Liam could hear the intercom sound next to the looping footage of the monitor, in the office.
“Herr Karsten, there is a man here to see you, sir. His name is Abdul Raya?” a voice announced to all the intercoms in the house.
“What?” Karsten’s squeal sounded from upstairs, while Liam just had to chuckle at his successful framing job. “I don’t have an appointment with him! He is supposed to be in Bruges, wreaking havoc!”
Liam crept out of the doors of the study while he could hear Karsten’s objections. That way he could keep track of the traitor’s location, so that he could evade him. The MI6 agent slipped out from the lavatory window on the second floor to avoid the main areas now frequented by paranoid security staff. Laughing, he jogged away from the evil walls of the horrible paradise that was about to host a ghastly standoff.
“Are you insane, Raya? Since when do I have diamonds to sell?” Karsten barked as he stood in the doorway of his office.
“Mister Karsten, you contacted me, offering for sale, the Sudan Eye stone,” Raya replied calmly, his black eyes glimmering.
“The Sudan Eye? What in God’s name are you talking about?” Karsten hissed. “We did not release you for this, Raya! We released you to do our bidding, to bring the world to its knees! Now you come and bother me with this absurd bullshit?”
Raya’s lips curled back, revealing his hideous teeth as he stepped up to the overweight swine talking down to him. “Be very careful who you treat like a dog, Mr. Karsten. I think you and your organization have forgotten who I am!” Raya fumed. “I am the great sage, the magician responsible for the locust plague of North Africa during 1943, a courtesy I extended to the Nazi forces upon the Allied forces stationed in the godforsaken barren earth they shed blood on!”
Karsten fell back in his chair, sweating profusely. “I…I ha-have no diamonds, Mr. Raya, I swear!”
“Prove it!” Raya rasped. “Show me your safes and your coffers. If I find nothing, and you have wasted my precious time, I will make you inside out while you live.”
“Oh Jesus!” Karsten wailed, staggering to the safe. His eyes caught the painting of Mother, glaring at him. He recalled Purdue’s words about his spineless flight, abandoning the old woman when her home was intruded on to rescue Purdue. After all, when news of her death reached the Order, questions already arose about the circumstances, since Karsten was with her that night. How was it that he got away and she did not? The Black Sun was an evil organization, but their members were all men and women of potent intellect and powerful means.
When Karsten opened his safe with relative security, he was confronted by a terrible vision. From the flung pouch, a few diamonds shimmered in the dark of the wall safe. “It’s impossible,” he said. “That is impossible! That is not mine!”
Raya shoved the quivering fool aside and gathered the diamonds up in his palm. Then he turned to face Karsten with a blood-curdling frown. His emaciated face and black hair gave him a distinct appearance of some harbinger of death, perhaps the Reaper himself. Karsten screamed for his security staff, but nobody answered.
34
The Best Hundred Quid
When the Chinook touched down on the abandoned landing strip outside Dansha, three military Jeeps stood in front of the Hercules airplane Purdue had rented for the Ethiopian excursion.
“We are fucked,” Nina mumbled, still pressing down on the wounded pilot’s leg with her bloodied hands. He was in no medical danger, as Sam aimed for the outside of his thigh, leaving him with nothing worse than a slight flesh wound. The side door slid open and the citizens were let out before the soldiers came to remove Nina. Sam was already disarmed and thrown in the back of one of the Jeeps.
They confiscated the two satchels Sam and Nina had with them, and they cuffed both.
“You think you can come into my country and steal?” the Captain shouted at them. “You think you can use our air patrol as your personal taxi? Hey?”
“Listen, there is going to be a tragedy if we don’t get to Egypt soon!” Sam tried to explain, but he got a punch in the gut for it.
“Please, listen!” Nina implored. “We have to get to Cairo to st
op the floods and the power failures before the whole world collapses!”
“Why not stop the earthquakes too, hey?” the Captain sneered at her, grasping Nina’s delicate jaw in his rough hand.
“Captain Ifili, take your hands off the woman!” a male voice ordered, prompting the captain to obey immediately. “Let her go. The man too.”
“With respect, sir,” the captain said without moving away from Nina, “she robbed the monastery and then this ingrate,” he snarled, kicking at Sam, “had the audacity to hijack our rescue helicopter.”
“I know very well what he did, Captain, but if you do not let them go right now, I will have you court martialed for insubordination. I might be retired, but I am still the main financial contributor to the Ethiopian Army,” the man roared.
“Yes, sir,” the captain replied, and motioned for the men to release Sam and Nina. When he stepped aside, Nina could not believe who her rescuer was. “Col. Yimenu?”
Next to him his personal entourage waited, four men in number. “Your pilot informed me of your purpose for visiting Tana Qirkos, Dr. Gould,” Yimenu told Nina. “And since I owe you a favor, I have no choice but to clear your way to Cairo. I shall leave two of my men at your disposal and security clearance from Ethiopia, via Eritrea and Sudan into Egypt.”
Nina and Sam exchanged looks of perplexity and distrust. “Um, thank you, Colonel,” she said carefully. “But may I ask why you are helping us? It is no secret that you and I did not get off on the right foot.”
“Despite your terrible predisposed judgement of my culture, Dr. Gould, and your vehement attacks on my personal life, you saved my son’s life. For that, I cannot but absolve you of any vendetta I may have had against you,” Col. Yimenu conceded.
“My God, I feel like shit now,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
Nina smiled and reached out a hand to him. “I said, I would like to extend my apologies to you for my assumptions and my harsh assertion.”
“You saved someone?” Sam asked, still reeling form the jab to the gut.
Col. Yimenu looked at the journalist, allowing him to film his statement. “She saved my son from certain drowning while the monastery was flooding. Many perished last night, and my Kantu would have been among them, had Dr. Gould not pulled him up from the water. He called me just as I was about to join Mr. Purdue and the others inside the mountain to oversee the return of the Holy Box, calling her an angel of Solomon. He told me her name and that she stole a skull. That is hardly a crime worthy of death, I’d say.”
Sam peeked at Nina over the viewfinder of his compact video camera, winking. It would be better that nobody knew what the skull contained. Soon after, Sam went with one of Yimenu’s men to collect Purdue and Patrick where their stolen Land Rover had run out of diesel. They managed to travel more than half the way before stopping, so it did not take Sam’s vehicle long to find them.
Three Days Later
With Yimenu’s clearance, the group soon made it into Cairo, where the Hercules finally touched down near the University. “Angel of Solomon, huh?” Sam teased. “Why, pray tell?”
“I have no idea,” Nina smiled, as they entered the ancient walls of the Dragon Watchers sanctuary.
“Did you see the news?” Purdue asked. “They found Karsten’s mansion completely abandoned, apart from evidence of a fire leaving soot on the walls. He is officially missing along with his family.”
“And those diamonds we…he…put in the safe?” Sam jested.
“Gone,” Purdue answered. “Either the Magician took them; not immediately realizing they were fake, of the Black Sun took them when they came to pick up their traitor to answer for Mother’s abandonment.”
“In whatever shape the Magician left him,” Nina cringed. “You heard what he did to Madame Chantal and her assistant and housekeeper that night. God knows what he thought up for Karsten.”
“Whatever happened to that Nazi swine, I am elated for it and I don’t feel bad at all,” Purdue said. They ascended the last flight, still feeling the effects of their painful expedition.
After the tedious journey back to Cairo, Patrick had been admitted to the local clinic to get his ankle fixed and stayed at the hotel while Purdue, Sam and Nina climbed the stairs up to the observatory where Masters Penekal and Ofar waited.
“Welcome!” Ofar chimed with his hands clasped. “I hear you might have good news for us?”
“I hope so, or by tomorrow we will be under the desert with an ocean over us,” the cynical grunt of Penekal reverberated from the elevated section where he was looking through the telescope.
“Looks like you bunch have been through another World War,” Ofar remarked. “I hope you did not sustain any serious injuries.”
“They will leave scars, Master Ofar,” Nina said, “but we are still alive and kicking.”
The entire observatory was adorned in antique maps, loom tapestries and old astronomical instruments. Nina sat down on the sofa next to Ofar, opening her satchel and the natural light of the yellow afternoon sky gilded the whole room in a magical atmosphere. When she revealed the stones, the two astronomers immediately approved.
“Those are the real ones. King Solomon’s diamonds,” Penekal smiled. “Thank you all so much for your help.”
Ofar looked at Purdue. “But weren’t these promised to Prof. Imru?”
“Would you take that chance, to leave them in his possession, with the alchemical rites he knows?” Purdue asked Ofar.
“Absolutely not, but I thought that was your deal,” Ofar said.
“Prof. Imru will learn that Joseph Karsten had stolen those from us when he tried to kill us at Mount Yeha, so we would be unable to hand them over, understand?” Purdue explained with great amusement.
“So we can keep them here in our vaults to thwart any more sinister alchemy?” Ofar asked.
“Yes, sir,” Purdue affirmed. “I have procured two of the three primes through private sales in Europe, and according to the deal, as you know, what I bought remains mine.”
“Fair enough,” Penekal said. “I would rather you keep them. That way the primes will be kept apart from King Solomon’s…” he gave the diamonds a quick estimate, “…other sixty two diamonds.”
“So the Magician used ten, all in all, so far to release the plagues?” Sam asked.
“Yes,” Ofar confirmed. “By using one prime, the Celeste. But those have already been released, so he can do no more harm as long as he cannot obtain these and Mr. Purdue’s two primes.”
“Good show,” Sam said. “And now your alchemist will undo the plagues?”
“Not undo, but stop the current damage, unless the Magician gets his hands on these before our alchemist had transmuted their composition to render them powerless,” Penekal replied.
Ofar wished to change the morbid subject. “I hear you did an entire expose on the MI6 corruption debacle, Mr. Cleave.”
“Aye, it will air on Monday,” Sam said proudly. “I had to edit and narrate the whole thing in two days, while my knife wound tortured me.”
“Well done,” Penekal smiled. “Especially when it comes to military matters, a country should not be left in the dark…so to speak.” He looked out over Cairo, still out of power. “But now that the missing head of MI6 will be exposed on international television, who will take his place?”
Sam grinned, “It looks like Special Agent Patrick Smith is up for a promotion for his outstanding valor in bringing Joe Carter to justice. And Col. Yimenu has backed his unfailing feats on camera too.”
“That is splendid,” Ofar cheered. “I hope our alchemist makes haste,” he sighed, pondering. “I have a bad feeling when he is tardy.”
“You always have a bad feeling when people are tardy, my old friend,” Penekal said. “You worry too much. Remember, life is unpredictable.”
“It certainly is, for the unprepared,” a malicious voice spoke from the top landing of the stairs. They all turned, feeling the air grow cold
with malevolence.
“Oh my God!” Purdue exclaimed.
“Who is that?” Sam asked.
“That…is…the Sage!” Ofar answered, shivering and clutching his chest. Penekal stepped in front of his friend, as Sam stepped in front of Nina. Purdue was standing in front of everyone.
“Are you to be my opponent, tall man?” the Magician asked suavely.
“I am,” Purdue answered.
“Purdue, what do you think you’re doing?” Nina hissed, terrified.
“Don’t do this,” Sam told Purdue with a firm hand on the shoulder. “You cannot be a martyr for guilt. People choose to do daft shite with you, remember. We choose to!”
“I have run out of patience and my course has been delayed enough by that two-timing pig in Austria,” Raya snarled. “Now, hand over Solomon’s stones or I will flay all of you alive.”
Nina held the diamonds behind her back, unaware that the unnatural creature had a sense for them. With callous strength, he tossed Purdue and Sam aside and reached for Nina.
“I am going to break every bone in your little body, Jezebel,” he growled, revealing those awful teeth to Nina’s face. She could not defend, as her hands held the diamonds fast.
With terrifying force, he seized Nina and swung her around against him. Her back against his belly, he held her against him to pry open her hands.
“Nina! Don’t let him have them!” Sam barked, getting to his feet. Purdue was stalking them from the other side. Nina wept in terror, her body shaking in the Magician’s horrid grasp as his claw gripped her left breast painfully.
A strange wail escaped him, escalating into a cry of terrible agony. Ofar and Penekal stepped back and Purdue stopped his creeping to ascertain what was happening. Nina could not flee from him, but his grip on her lightened rapidly, along with his screech growing louder.
Sam frowned in confusion, having no idea what was going on. “Nina! Nina, what is happening?”
Order of the Black Sun Box Set 6 Page 57
